Sunday, 7 February 2010
Four weeks on - 100% germination rate.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:Milton Grove,Hackney,United Kingdom
Showing posts with label Broad Beans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Broad Beans. Show all posts
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!
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.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:Church Walk,Hackney,United Kingdom
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
