I planted my chitted potatoes (Anya new potatoes and Maris Piper main crop) on the 5th May (the Bank Holiday Monday) and although expecting them to grow a little quicker that the 30 days they took planted 1st March in the garden as the soil is warmer, I didn’t expect that they’d be poking through the soil already!
The weather has been rather rainy in the last few days so that and the fact I sliced my thumb with a parang, plus other commitments have meant that I haven’t been to the plot since the weekend, it’s good to see that things are starting to grow. Unfortunately so are the slugs and I perhaps need to invest in some more organic slug pellets.
I’m really impressed with the efforts the rhubarb has made in the last few days and that the potatoes sprouted after only 18 days is fantastic. The jerusalem artichoke is settling in ok, despite the slugs.
This weekend I have to fit in time to plant the rest of my onion sets, pot on the strawberry plants as well as the butternut squash plants and give the mini-greenhouse at home a lot of attention. I need to plan where I am planting the outdoor tomato plants too. Fingers crossed the sun shines for us all!
This afternoon I held a little plant sale, I had been worried whether to hold it at all due to the weather forecast, but the day before I decided to go for it and advertised.
Thank you to those who popped by, a reminder; plant info is located here.
The sun showed it’s face for a while and in the end it didn’t rain! I sold a few plants, enough to pay for my allotment for the year anyhow!
I must say I rather enjoyed it, it was lovely that a friend popped over for a natter, plus in the downtime I had the chance to plant my beetroot seedlings and pot on my nasturtium.
There’s still quite a few plants leftover so I might see what the weather is like next weekend, maybe another sale will pay for some organic compost from Haddenham Garden Centre, any leftover can go in the allotment if not!
There’s been a few sunny days with lots of April showers recently, which I guess is only to be expected!
Here are a few things happening in the garden currently:
Apple blossoms
Cosse Violette and Cobra plants ready to go
Peas loving the sunshine
My second early’s sprouting
Chilli plants in the warm greenhouse
Rocket seedlings
Spinach seedlings
Aaron Pilot 1st Early and Scarlet Globe radishes
Winter squash seedlings appearing
Tomatoes almost ready to plant out
I’ve had a couple of dramas trying to get an allotment, which I shall mention in another post, but suffice to say the plants I have been getting ready to go on the plot are pretty much ready and I have no plot to put them on!
I’m thinking of having a plant sale to sell my excess plants but I’m not sure what the weather will be doing from one day to the next so it’s difficult to organise. Although I might just have a couple over a few Sundays and advertise locally. I’ve also been toying with the idea of setting up my own garden services business. Watch this space!
On sunny days I have been taking my seedlings outside, partially to let them make the most of the sun and partially to start the hardening off process. There was another visitor to the garden today; a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly, unfortunately by the time I’d popped into the house to find my phone to take a picture, it had gone.
I’ve started to get rather low on potting compost, so yesterday went to 4 or 5 different places in Aylesbury to find some organic compost and tomato feed, I was really surprised to not find any. The last place I bought some (Waddesdon Plant Centre) has since closed. In the end a trip to Haddenham Garden Centre did the job, finding 50 litre bags of multipurpose at £5.99 or on offer; 3 for 2 – bargain! It’s peat free too, even better, peat should be left in its natural habitat supporting our native wildlife.
organic compost
We picked up some grow bags for the mini greenhouse too, which meant I had a perfect reason to get the greenhouse ship-shape and stop using it as storage!
items previously stored in the greenhouse
Grow bags in greenhouse
It’s a bit of a squeeze for the grow bags on the side, but I figure the tomato roots won’t mind what shape they grow into.
It gave me an opportunity to water everything and reorganise the pots that had been in the beds and inspect everything.
Here the pea and chard seedlings are starting to sprout:
various pea varieties on left, centre to right, swiss chard, bright lights
compostapots
The pots in the beds are going much slower than I hoped so I have decided to bring them into the greenhouse for now. The catnep is showing a couple of germinated seeds and the mallow is germinating. The wild primrose isn’t doing anything as yet.
This is how I have laid everything out until the tomatoes and cucumbers need to go in:
full greenhouse
The broad beans aren’t doing anything, so hopefully some greenhouse time will give them a chance to get going. The coriander is just sprouting, the time in the greenhouse appears to have done it some good.
These are the cucumber seedlings, just starting to get their first pair of true leaves, it’ll be time to pot them up soon! I tried leaving the lid off them the other day, they didn’t much like it, I think the small amount of wind we had was stripping them of their water as they went papery thin and a little droopy, fortunately another watering and quick replacement of the lid had them recovering in 20 minutes.
The same with tomato maskotka, the first true leaves are starting to grow so they’ll need potting in the next few days.
The Hungarian wax chilli plants are coming up nicely, they’ll stay in the propagator a while yet tho.
My mutant marigolds are doing as well as the regular ones, nothing to report there.
Lavendar seedlings are just starting to sprout – if you look ever so closely!I read the labels of some cat repellant in the garden centre the other day (not organic) but the active ingredient in quite a few was garlic… so that and the persistent acrobatics of the local felines has swung my decision to grow garlic! This bag has 3 massive bulbs in it, each clove of which should result in a bulb. These were 25% off too and they have a lovely pink skin which I rather like. I’m going to have to do a little research as they don’t actually tell you when to plant them.
What a wonderful sunny Sunday today! I’m mostly still in the waiting stage of gardening so a little watering of the potatoes and a peak at everything growing meant my gardening jobs were pretty much over… so I spent the afternoon on a picnic blanket on the front lawn of Waddesdon Manor with a lovely girlie friend from Westcott, a wonderful time to pass a sunny Sunday. Both being residents we had our pleb-passes (residents season ticket) so free entry to the National Trust Rothschild Estate grounds!
cucumbers and Maskotka tomatoes
The cucumbers are all coming up healthy, and the maskotka tomatoes are still looking good, I managed to pull the leaves off one seedling by accident, it was stuck inside its seed sheath and I tried helping it along, I shall be more careful. I do rather like the cute way that the tomato leaves fold up at night, like they’re tucking themselves in for the night! This propagator was left out for the day to make the most of the sunshine, along with the newly sprouting marigold.
French Marigold seedlings – Naughty Marietta
Tomatoes Golden Sunrise and Black Russian have just started sprouting:
Tomato Golden Sunrise
Tomato Black Russian
Here are a couple of snaps of the herbs that are braving the season, I placed the nasturtium outdoors for the day to make the most of the sunshine as they are the most advanced.
Nasturtium
Dill
Sweet marjoram and thyme
In case you’re wondering, the straw was because they were initially planted outdoors and was an attempt to keep the frost off, I’ve now removed most of it as it’s warm enough indoors!
I hope all your veggie patches are enjoying the sunny weather.
River Thame bursting it’s usually steep banks. Car is driving through water over bridge
We’ve had unprecedented amounts of rain in recent months and so planning to start off the gardening year has been a little problematic. The ground may be too wet or more rain may cause germination problems. Soil preparation hasn’t really been possible. The growing season has already started, the weeds were looking really healthy and the snowdrops & daffodil are out in force.
Snowdrops
In the last week I decided to prepare for a nice day so invested in a propagator and bought fresh seeds and seed potatoes and shopped for the required paraphernalia. I thought I’d try to germinate some coriander seeds I had laying around in the kitchen (you never know), these have been in for about a week now (nothing happening yet!). My herb seeds have been sown in terracotta pots ready to be placed outside the kitchen door, although it’s too cold for the seedlings right now they are being germinated indoors. For info; Dill, Chives, Garlic Chives, Spearmint, Nasturtium, Sweet Marjoram, Thyme, Sweet Genovese Basil, Plain leaved Parsley and Giant Italian Parsley.
Finally, with a whole weekend of rain forecasted (and camping plans cancelled), I awoke 7am this morning to beautiful sunshine and lots of blue sky! Needless to say the wellies were on and the fork and spade were on duty digging and weeding all the veggie beds in the garden. I don’t know what the soil in your garden is like but I have grown up gardening on clay soil so I expected this to be very heavy going. Surprisingly the soil was easy enough to deal with here in Waddesdon, also a little help does come in handy! The lawn is still a little soggy tho.
Digging completed, random gladioli bulbs and a foxglove rescued for other beds, chitted seed potatoes untangled from the netting and I quickly realise I need twice the space I’d planned for the potatoes – ah well! Potatoes in (Aaron first early’s) and a quick glance over the shoulder at a few clouds later I decide there is still plenty of time to get going on sowing some of the earlier seeds outdoors.
Sowing wild primrose
Armed with those ‘Compostapots’ (the biodegradable pots that allow you to either remove for planting or just plant intact), my organic compost and some Rootgrow (first time trying this stuff – some friendly fungus that aids a growing root system organically), I get sowing catnep (have you ever used this in tea or as a seasoning?), mallow, wild primrose (great in salads) and broad bean (bunyard’s exhibition) and labelling them up. Adding the Rootgrow layer makes the process twice as long but I’m sure the healthy root growth will lead to more abundant tasty veggies!
Poo prevention
These were all placed under a 3 metre length cloche in situ, which also served as cat poo prevention on the recently dug beds. Other poo prevention measures included garden canes criss-crossed over the potatoes and an old green gate laid over an empty bed. We seem to get the cons of cats without the benefit of ownership!
Tomato (maskotka), cucumber (bush champion) were sown in the propagator and slotted onto the kitchen windowsill. The coriander was kicked out under the cloche so as to make room. We decided the bed viewed from the kitchen would be flowers, so the rescued foxglove took centre stage:
Foxglove
Starting to get a little chilled and with the promise of a cup of tea I decided to call it a day, everything tidied away to what I am assured is not called the potting shed as it’s for specific man things. Whilst in town another propagator was acquired as was a mini greenhouse – lots to do tomorrow if the weather holds!
Green Garden Gate Waddesdon 