Planting the garlic and creating the broad bean bed.

Sunday, 7 February 2010

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!

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.
  

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.

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.