Cold, work and mother-in-law induced hiatus

Sunday 31 January 2010

It's been dificult to get going in the garden this weekend. It was lovely having the mother-in-law to stay, but labouring under a modest (belated) Burns night hangover meant we didn't really get going on Saturday. Plus work has been full-on this week (a semi-pitch and a quarterly review on a big account) - leaving me craving a bit of veg-time on the couch rather than in the garden. Besides, it's all justifiable with the ground frozen and a dusting of snow that hasn't shifted all weekend.

Notable signs of progress this week:

• The sun is just hitting the back of the raised bed for the first time in two months; we're in the shadow of a workshop when the sun's on it's lowest trajectory. I'm hoping that in two weeks' time the whole veg patch will start getting the sun. As soon as it does we're in business.
  
• Roots of the Garlic are visible when we unfold the bottom of the recycled paper pots. These are all lined up on the shed's workbench. As soon as we start seeing shoots we'll move them in to the light and will plant out as soon as we can get the ground ready.
  
• The first set of true leaves are appearing on the tomato seedlings, which have been moved to the more evenly-temperatured sitting room. This is just two weeks after sowing.
• The seed potatoes are sprouting nicely in the dining room and have proved to be an excellent talking point.

What we've managed to do this weekend:

• Started-off a mushroom kit indoors.
  
• Visited a Hackney Garden Centre called Growing Concerns. Nicholas will post a review.
• Bought some cool zinc plant labels and wrote-out the full set for the end of the rows in the raised bed (opposite).
  
• Bought organic potato fertiliser and blood and bone meal for the vine that I've been growing for the last five years. We had some lovely grapes off it last year.
  

Plans for the weekend

Tuesday 26 January 2010

Sitting enjoying a rough cocktail whilst musing on the plans for the weekend.

I think we paid too much attention to edibles last year. This year we're also replanting the perenials bed for a riot of colour. We'll be sowing a raft of seeds; mostly aimed at bees and planting alliums, dhalias and gladioli.

Suggestions welcome.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:A10,Hackney,United Kingdom

Sowing Tomatoes

Sunday 24 January 2010

We didn't mention it at the time, but last weekend we sowed Tumbling Toms from Thompson and Morgan, two/three at a time into 3" pots. We grew this variety very successfully in hanging baskets and hay troughs around the garden last year. As the name suggest they have a spreading trailing habit that suits this type of situation and therefore maximise space for us by using up wall space.

Used in salads and intense sauces throughout the summer the remaining unripe and semi ripe fruit were snipped off en-mass, ripened on trays in window sills for a week and then thrown into Nigel Slater's Green and Red Tomato Chutney. This turned out more like a rough ketchup, spicy and sweet, than a true chutney. It was great with cheese, dolloped into stews and given away as Christmas presents.

To germinate effectively these need to be kept at a constant 20 degrees, or there abouts, so we've had them on the radiator in our bedroom. We've had an almost 100% germination rate, with seedlings popping through in just four days rather than the seven to 10 days promised on the packet.

As soon as germination has taken place we moved the pots to the upstairs bathroom window. This is our only south-facing window and looks out onto our inverted-apex-style roof, which means it gets the best light at this time of year. As the bathroom is at the top of the house - five flighst up - it also stays fairly warm. This should be an excellent position for them to mature to planting-out time in May. At that point I would expect them to be 4-6" tall - let's see.

Potatoes, Broad Beans and Happy Birthday Alicia.

Saturday 23 January 2010

Despite a rather late night celebrating Alicia’s birthday at Luxe in Spitalfields we actually did do some gardening today, albeit slowly and with less precision than normal.

Today it was all about Potatoes and Broad Beans. We ordered two types of seed potato from Suttons, the first being the Charlotte, which is an early delicious spud, very versatile and one of my favourites and secondly the Foremost, which is a fantastic early potato.

We are chitting the spuds in old egg boxes and have placed them on a wee table in the dining room ensuring it gets constant even light through the day via a basement window. They will be grown in old tyres which we have “rescued” from a garage round the corner filled with a mixture of manure and top soil. Stephen has described the mathematical precision of how they need to be placed in the tyres and their proximity to each other which involved a diagram, I slightly zoned out at this stage, I’m more of a visionary I think.

We have far more than we need, of course! Is it a really naff and cheap to give people the chitted potatoes we don’t use as presents? Mmmm, probably. However, if you do want some please let us know.

Next on the agenda were the Broad Beans - Bunyard's Exhibit from Thompson and Morgans. As a child I hated Broad Beans, I just found them tasteless and a bit powdery. But growing them last year for the first time and eating them asap after podding proved a very different experience. The little morsels were sweet, tender and yummy. My favourite way of preparing them is to get everyone in the house shelling them round the kitchen table and then having Stephen make a delicious risotto. A simple but beautiful dish, just make sure you use good quality chicken stock, the best risotto rice you can lay your hands on (try Carnaroli), plenty of white wine, parmesan, pancetta (it's even worth throwing in any spare bean/pea shoots for extra zing).

Our Broad Beans have been sown in half a dozen plant pots and some left over plastic cups from the party last night – recycling at it’s best.

We’ll harden them up a bit outside once the weather heats up before planting them into the bed – Stephen thinks we’ll be eating them by June, I think May.

The garlic pots

Sunday 17 January 2010

Today we filled our home made eco-pots with compost and planted the long awaited garlic. We have 38 wee pots resting in the garden shed (garlic likes a cold snap to get it bulbing up).

The garlic sets, Albigensian Wight, came from the Ilse Of Wight Garlic Farm last October. They stored quite well with only 2-3 cloves being lost over the last three months.

In your vegetable garden during January

Thursday 14 January 2010

Great topical tips for organic gardening.

View of our little patch from the roof.

Blueberries

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Everyone seems to be growing them and not wanting to be 'off-trend' we ordered three blueberry bushes at the start of January from Buckingham Nurseries. Very cost effective plants - I think it was under 15 squid for three includinging postage. However, we got a bit of a surprise when they arived in one small box. A kind of 'oh is that it?' moment. They're one-year old cuttings - about 6" tall - for some reason we were expecting something more bush-like. Although a little disappointed with their diminutive size, they look very healthy.

On the advice in one of Bob Flowerdew's books (The Gourmet Gardener) that I received as a lovely stocking filler from Nicholas and the BBC website's 'growing blueberries' page we've opted for two Herberts for their flavour and one Patriot for its vigour - all sounds a bit yankee-doodle to me, but as I said it's all about being on-trend. Apparently it's a very good idea to have a least two varieties to aid pollination.

We've saved the tips of our Christmas tree to mix in with eracatious compost and manure and will plant all three in an old cast-iron bath. Given the amount of space they have for the first few years, we should have space for a bit of companion planting - ideas welcome. They'll need transplanting eventually to 5' apart, but I suspect that will be in a few years. Don't expect an update anytime soon.

The Spitalfields Horticultural show 2009

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Al's photos from last year's Spitalfields Horticultural Show are up on Flickr.

Where we missed out on the veggies, Sarah and Nicholas made up in the baking category.

Nine first all up, plus four seconds and seven thirds.

We were awarded first, second and third for Nicholas's tomatoes - lovingly dressed for the show by me.

Seedling pots

In preparation for sowing over the coming week, I have been using a very nifty Christmas present from my sister Kate. She very kindly bought me a ‘make your own plant pot kit’ that has proven to be a great success. You basically cut 3inch strips of newspaper, roll them around the wooden shaft and tuck under the edges using the ridge plate, fastening the seem with a bit of tape. In one evening, we've churned out about 30 seedling pots. Environmentally friendly, simple and highly cost effective.

John Cushnie

Friday 8 January 2010

Greatly saddened by the sudden death last week of the straight-talking, but lovely and ever entertaining John Cushnie, one of our favourite panelists on Gardeners' Question Time. He will be greatly missed by many.

Cloches

Thursday 7 January 2010

So just to be clear, when Nicholas talks about 'bits of plastic', I've been looking at ways of getting an early start on sowing. We want to aim wherever possible at having two sowings of vegetables in the same space in one year.

We missed the really good weather last October for planting overwintering garlic and broad beans, mainly because the raised bed wasn't ready in time. November was a complete wash-out, cold and day after day of rain so we didn't take the risk of planting garlic sets only from them to rot away. Both of these crops can be planted in February, but the challenge is to get the ground into a condition that will kick start germination and then speed things along enough so that both crops can be harvested by the end of May to make room for the vegetable next sowing.

To help get the ground ready we have covered the raised bed with a double layer of cheap plastic dust sheets. The aim here is to give the bed chance to dry out a little earlier. Since we put these sheets down we have had three weeks of heavy rain and snow, so at the moment it looks like we're boxing clever.

As we're aiming to plant and sow these direct in February, to make sure we don't come a cropper on further bad weather I'm aim to make or source some good quality barn cloches to offer protection through to March. The research I've done to date has given me two ideas.

One idea is to make these cloches from scratch using custom-cut 10mm polycarbonate sheets. These would be cut into 1500mm x 300mm strips, with two of these strip being attached to wooden frames in a tent shape with two end pieces. Cost to produce two of these will be about £80 for the polycarbonate and wood.

The alternative is to buy pre-made cloches. The best looking and most reasonably priced are from the posh cloche company. Very cool name. Doesn't give the flexibility in size, but we could support two 1250mm rows for £75 and would save a lot of time.

Image coutesy of the Posh Cloche Company.

Came across this chaps blog about making his own cloches in my research - really fancy having ago at making old-school Chase Barn Cloches one day. My granddad also used to use these when he had his big veg patch. They disappeared years ago though; pity.

Getting Started

Wednesday 6 January 2010

Our first entry for the Hackney Veg patch blog (will anyone other than Stephen read this.....? ok ok, Hi Mam). I'm Nicholas Ridley-Wilson, some like to call me NRW, my boyfriend is Stephen Derbyshire - we like gardneing, we love our home in Stoke Newington and this is the story of our veg patch.

We are now over the Christmas excess and have been busy preparing our new and very fabulous raised bed which is filled with the very best cow poo the south of England had to offer us on a cold and wet Sunday morning. Being one of the coldest winters of record we have had to take precautions to ensure that the bed doesn't fail us in the coming months, therefore it is now toasty and warm with a big plastic sheet over it. Of course this isn't sufficient in the long run so Stephen has been doing extensive research into various erect plastic apparatus (cloches) that will protect our wee seedlings when the sowing season commences - I can't wait. Can you?

While drinking various Christmas alcoholic concoctions over the past week or so our gardening hasn't come to an absolute halt, we have been very busy looking though seed catalogues and websites, including incluiding our favourite Thompson and Morgan and Suttons, ordering a plethora (love that word) of culinary and green delights that will see us though the next year. Naturally this list of seeds were cross referenced from various sources to ensure we have the best variety (thank you to Gardeners Question Time expert Bob Flowerdew - we love you man). Our seed box is half full and once the others arrive we will be on our way to the "Goode Life". We have even bought some blueberry plants which are currently being held hostage at the post office and I will get the tomorrow, I promise.

Well, if you managed to get to the end of this very uneventful first entry congrats - expect more exciting news when the weather gets hotter and the days get longer.