Rain and leeks

Sunday 28 February 2010

I am so sick of the cold, wet and miserable weather, bring on spring immediately if not sooner. Don’t get me wrong I have had a lovely weekend, we had a wonderful brunch at The House in Islington on Saturday relaxing and eating scrumptious food with friends, and I made a yummy marmalade cake today but what I really want is a full day in the garden not just a few moments between the passing showers.

Despite the rain we have managed to get a bit of gardening done. Today the leeks were sown in cell trays, which again have been put in the warm study for germination. Speaking of which I am very happy to report that my sweet peas have popped through (see picture) and the garden peas under the budget cloche in the raised bed have now germinated – a true sign of great things to come. We will be sowing the next batch of both the sweet peas and garden peas in just a couple of weeks.

All of our seedlings have done so well inside; germination is at 100%, wee plants are sprouting up all over the place and we have some really sturdy tomato seedlings. The worry is what will happen when they go outside. We seem to have a regular visitor to the Hackney Veg Garden restaurant – the squirrel. Everyday he comes to feed on the nuts we put out for the birds and just this weekend he devoured a very healthy portion of chard I had re-planted in an old tyre filled with compost and soil. His days are numbered, believe me.

There is more snow forecast for the week ahead, fingers crossed it will be gone by the weekend - just like that squirrel.

Sowing Garden Peas and Sweet Peas

Monday 22 February 2010

After a hellish week at work it was great to wake up on Saturday morning to see the sun shining, the birds singing and no rain (despite the weather forecast). So after a quick cup of tea and some yummy baked eggs (thank you Stephen) it was straight out into the garden.

We have been saving up our toilet roll tubes for the past few weeks to use in place of seed trays and so with about two dozen I decided to use these to sow our sweet peas. I have bought a couple of varieties but the ones I have sown this week are Mr Fothergill’s “Sweet Pea Bouquet Mixed” which promises large flowers and vigorous climbing. I have placed the loo roll holders in the very warm study (which is slowly becoming more of a green house) where if they are to germinate, I will be smelling sweet peas in just a couple of months. I can’t wait.

We also planted the broad beans in the broad bean bed which I described in a previous post. We have covered them in netting so fingers crossed the slugs, squirrels and other pests don’t find their way in.

We also took a bit of a risk this weekend and sowed the peas, which I am confident will be ok as they will be protected by the handy workmanship of Stephen’s uber cheap and ever-so-efficient cloch, which I am sure he will describe in a more detailed post later.

Our vegetable garden schedule

Monday 15 February 2010

I get a little annoyed watching Gardeners World. It’s a little like the BBC breakfast news, which I had to stop watching in the end due to my shouting upsetting our house mates. Gardeners World isn’t quite as bad, but they lost their way somewhere (I think it was after Precy Thrower retired). They seem to spend too much time trying to convince you how quick and easy gardening is and miss-out some of the really important lessons – like planning. We spent most of the winter planning; drawing out beds, pouring through seed catalogues, researching the best varieties and planning the optimum schedule for our little vegetable garden. And I have to say – I think I had almost as much fun doing that as I’m going to have when our friends come over for the harvest.

Our vegetable garden plan is based on intercropping and catch cropping principles. That is to say, growing quick crops in temporary spaces between slow growing veg (radishes between sprouts for example) and replacing spring harvested veg with summer / winter veg as soon as possible.

You’ll notice there’s a heavy focus on summer veg on this plan, with little left on the patch for winter. Our housemates Sarah and Al are moving back to Australia in June and Alicia wants to buy her own place. Although I’m sure it wasn’t anything to do with my morning rants against the TV, this does leaves us wondering whether we’ll reap even the summer harvest – we’re certainly not looking further than the end of the year.

The best laid plans of mice and men…

Valentine's Weekend

Well we can’t be accused of slacking off this weekend, we have gardened like machines, machines I tell you.

The front section of the garden was in a bit of a state, a leaking half filled pond with a pretty miserable looking toad, some weeds, some rather lanky leeks/healthy looking spring onions and some unidentifiable debris. This year I want this section full of flowers and colour, as last year the only colour going on was green. So while many of you were getting flowers, for us, this Valentine’s weekend was to prepare the flower bed.

First things first was to clear the ground of all of the above (apart from Mr Toad who was kept in a safe place). The ground wasn’t too bad to be honest, a little rocky but plenty of relatively fine top soil. There was however no organic matter in there, so with a shovel and possibly the worst wheel-barrow ever made we dug some of the manure from the raised bed and transferred it to the flower bed. Doing so we realised the raised bed needed more top soil so it really was a case of moving dirt round in circles for most of Saturday. I was pleased to use our very cool vintage soil sieve from RE, which ensured any rocks were discarded. 

While most of the nation was romancing their Sunday’s away we decided to visit the garden centre and stock up on “essentials”. A ton of plants were bought including some lupins (probably in my top 5 all time plants), some red hot pokers, verbena, fox gloves and some gladiola bulbs. We also acquired some grit and a pond – well a big trug that will be used as the new pond. Back home we finished preparing the flower bed and planted some of the plants that will survive the cold weather that is lingering on. While re-laying some of the rocks in the bed we found an army of snails under a huge stone, they must have been hibernating for the winter. These lucky chaps are now in a pot ready to be transferred to the park and away from our plants. I am sure there will be more where they came from!

Broad beans update

Sunday 7 February 2010

Four weeks on - 100% germination rate.

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Location:Milton Grove,Hackney,United Kingdom

Tomato progress - a quick ketchup

Four weeks on. Short of good sunlight progress is slow.

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Location:Milton Grove,Hackney,United Kingdom

Planting the garlic and creating the broad bean bed.

It’s been the first weekend in what feels like ages that we have actually had a productive time in the garden thanks to the weather being on our side.

Now that our broad bean seeds have all germinated thanks to early indoor sowing it won’t be long till we harden them off and then plant them out. So my job today was to create the broad bean bed. This isn’t in the raised bed but is where the original veg patch was last year. Thankfully the soil had a great mix of compost in it from last year so wasn’t too difficult to dig over. I also moved over some of the manure from the raised bed to add some body and organic matter, which I am sure the beans with love. So if the weather stays snow and frost-free the seedlings will be in the bean bed in no time.

Next on the agenda was the garlic which we have written about before. The garlic had some great root growth which had started to push through the homemade newspaper pots so it was time to get them in the ground. We spent a bit of time getting the raised bed in order by adding some top soil to improve the consistency and then with an old bit of plastic pipe made some holes for the garlic to go in. Easy as pie! I am looking forward to seeing what the garlic will look like when it comes up, but not as excited as I am about eating it!

Growing Potatoes in Tyres

If you listened to gardeners question time this week you might have heard a nice lady, Mrs Elizabeth Gladman talking about her experiences growing potatoes in tyre stacks. She had pretty dismal results. Not surprising as, under her husbands advice, she had set the potatoes growing in straw - not the best growing medium Bob Flowerdew noted.

Bob did go onto to say that she could get bumper crops out of tyres stacks if done right. Glad to hear it as our entire potato crop will be grown in tyre stacks next to the shed. The benefit of using tyres as far as I can see are:

1) Rubber is highly insulating and will protect the tubers from late frosts, uinlike those plastic (over-priced) containers being sold in the shops. This means we can start the earlies very early.
2) The stacking nature means we can add height easily to allow us to earth-up around the haulms (the green tops).
3) The volume of soil you can get into three tyres stacked up is enormous - this scale makes it easier to keep the containers from drying out when your not around for a few days.
4) This is super-recycling - no energy, except man power, is required to convert them into useful garden hardware.

We've been collecting tyres for the last few weeks from the garage around the corner - picking through the industrial garbage whilst the neighbours look on, wondering whether they should call the police. We have eight so far and need another four for to complete the arrangement:

3x stacks of three tyres for the potatoes - two for Charlotte, one for Foremost
3x single tyres for lettuce (these will sit infront of the potatoes to break-up the rubber wall affect)

Taking advatage of the fine weather this morning we set about removing the rims from the tyres. This was done by steadily scoring through the rim with a Stanley Knife, before moving onto a hacksaw. The best way to do this is to give yourself a flatish surface to saw through by bending the rim towards you as you cut - see first photo.

Biggest sign of progress this week - the raised bed was in 'full sun' for about an hour this afternoon. That's the first time in two months. As you can see by this photo taken from the drawing room it was weak, but sunlight none the less.

The first signs of life, Broad Beans

Tuesday 2 February 2010

The broad beans are starting to poke through, ten days after sowing. They're on the desk in the office. Some are in the open, others are under a layer of bubble wrap. The later seem to be doing best.


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Location:Church Walk,Hackney,United Kingdom