The Frantic Gardeners’ Blog

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.

garden stuff - my broad beans in modules need to go in the ground - as do the onion sets [late I know!] and potatoes [ditto]. SOme of the peas are ready to harden off. one of the modules is teaming with spider babies - tiny and yellow and black - prob deadly!! They run up and down the web presumably left by parent and then hide in 2 lumps under some leaves. The courgette have germinated, but not the other cucurbits yet. one sweetcorn germinated!! kirsty’s peas germinated. Must pot up toms.

garden stuff - my broad beans in modules need to go in the ground - as do the onion sets [late I know!] and potatoes [ditto]. SOme of the peas are ready to harden off. one of the modules is teaming with spider babies - tiny and yellow and black - prob deadly!! They run up and down the web presumably left by parent and then hide in 2 lumps under some leaves. The courgette have germinated, but not the other cucurbits yet. one sweetcorn germinated!! kirsty’s peas germinated. Must pot up toms.

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 all went outside after lunch to enjoy the good weather. the girls raced about playing games, SB made a potion with flowers, and BB watered things. our fruit trees are coming into flower - the merryweather damson is covered in flowers. Our broad beans outside are getting going, as is the radish. no sign yet of carrots though.

Seed sowing - cauliflower, autumn giant leek, mangetout and peas. [must reinstate gardening blog!] the aubergines, peppers and toms all have at least a few seedlings - unsure at present which are which as only seed leaves! The peas from before are coming up [1 week since sown]. Both girls ‘helped’ me - which is why there is a variable number of seeds in each module, and by the end I have no idea what is where! luckily, they become obvious as they grow.

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??

how those weeds grow!

Under cover

only a minimum of sowing today - the replacement courgettes [gold rush], mixed lettuce and sweet fennel. Lots of watering in the propagatory and the greenhouse. Such a hot day that the temp in the conservatory reached above our scale [50C] help!! all windows/doors opened. It will get cooler in there when the grape vine leaves come out.

the runner beans and sweet peas have germinated, but not the climbing french beans.

Fruit

Our fruit trees have all come to life with leaf buds - no flowers, but that was expected for their first year. The grape vine has leaves and shoots all over the place. We can spot some not alive branches to be cut out. The training is not traditional - well the vine is> 100 years old. I’ve been looking up grape vine pruning and training, so we will try and get things going a bit. We’re not entirely sure what kind of grape we have - it has seeds, its green, and it gets sweeter the longer it is left on the vine, and was OK at Xmas. Our patio nectarine in a pot has some flowers. Lets see how it does.

The Veg Plot

Weeds continue to grow apace! I hoed the broad beans, garlic and half the onions. Chris and I between us dug over and weeded the area for the mangetout peas whilst BB slept and SB did some maths. The carrot lines are so runover with weeds that TBH, I can hardly see what is there, even the radish isn’t helping.

the asparagus hasn’t made an appearance yet though, and i haven’t managed to plant the potatoes- must do that!!

Weeds here are a MUCH huger problem that in our Leeds raised beds. hundreds germinate all over the place. The ground must be one massive weed seed collection. We are contemplating our mulching and growing through paper options for those things that are suitable.

The rest!

Well, we finally did some sorting of the pond, so that looks much better. Grass needs a cut and the flower borders are weed borders!

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but my beans were deperate to sow beans! SO we sowed some climbing bean blue lake, and some runner bean enorma, amd also some sweet peas.

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The sweetcorn experiment has shown that 8 have chitted in the paper and water pot, and 1 is putting up its head in the loo roll tubes. the chitted ones have now been introduced to soil in roottrainers.

We have good germination on the cucurbits: pumpkins and the festival squash, but no sign of courgettes as yet. Most of the varying pea types from last showing ar erupting through, as are the brassicas. No sign yet of the florence fennel though.

The grape vine is really getting going as well. There are a few branches with nothing sprouting as yet, so we will keep an eye on those and earmark them for pruning.

Other than that, yet more weeding in the veg beds, and some sawing up of branches from the pruned fig. unfotunately there was a fair bit of trampling of broad beans by the herd of little beans that are our children - sigh! raised beds were such an advantage there.