Day 33 on the allotment!

onions!

seeds going into the roots bed

potatoes!

beans and sweetcorn

the garden flowers at home

Wow what a busy week! Lots of rain too so not really an opportunity to get to the allotment so I am a little behind on potting on and planting.

A quick update; My onions are peeking through the soil, I have had a chance to get the seeds in I wanted: carrots, parsnips, lettuce, beetroot, chard, celery and some French marigold for good measure. My potatoes are really going for it and need ridging up, the beans and sweetcorn are a little slow-growing tho.

I have been working hard and buzzing around a lot (and someone texted far too early this morning) so I am afraid it all caught up with me a little today, I wasn’t at the allotment for as long as I would have liked, I still had daylight hours and a jobs list to complete! I decided to leave a few tasks for tomorrow, but did make a point of raking over the beds again, particularly where I plan to add in a greenhouse, I am trying to level this off.

I also decided that I want to plant more peas and beans, I have the space to do so if I plan carefully, and I have the extra plants anyway. I added in some canes in between the corn and beans/peas as far away from the mounds as I can so to minimise any light being blocked from the corn. Tomorrow I shall plant the legumes in this structure.

I still need to finish off planting my onions, and would like to try to squeeze some more into the bed, I am thinking instead of adding more rows perhaps I should interplant the sets between those already growing, i.e. did I plant initially with too much space… I shall have to read up and find out. I also still need to sort out my strawberry plants.

I was gutted to find another allotment holder had moved some pallets on my plot and destroyed all my courgette seedlings (and the rabbits have finished them off), he has offered to sow some more for me which is lovely but it will make me a little more behind schedule. I shall have to go ahead and plant the squash and hope the courgette can catch up without being smothered.

I helped out again at an allotment in Haddenham again this morning and gained some borage plants and some Jerusalem artichoke plants from a plant swap there. I need to get them in the ground pretty sharpish so they get going.

Tomorrow I also need to head to Buckingham to start dismantling a greenhouse I was offered through Freecycle, this would be really good for my tomatoes so I am super excited about this!

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

Baby spiders and sweetcorn

my first ever baby sweetcorn!

sweet peas looking promising, frost damage on French beans and nasturtium

frost damage on cucumbers

Baby spiders

I took these photos about a week ago in the garden, not long after our last frost, unfortunately I lost most of my cucumbers (apart from two that were still in the mini-greenhouse) and I had no seed left. My friend kindly gave me some of hers (‘Masterpiece’) so I have sown them, hopefully they will catch up!

There were some baby spiders that had made some garden string their home for a day, with a bit of forethought I should have put a couple in the greenhouse, one or two made it in with my tomatoes – which also didn’t look too happy with the frost but survived, I had hardened them off pretty well, but the last frost was a lesson learned.  The frost also caught a good proportion of my French beans, but they are still growing new leaves so hopefully no lasting damage. Lastly, I lost a couple of squash plants, but the rest look happy enough and will need potting on soon.

I am very excited by my baby sweetcorn plants, they look very cute! I shall plant them on the allotment using the 3-sisters technique, a type of companion planting with beans and squash, as mentioned in another post.

In the garden the broad beans are growing very fast, as are all my potatoes, I should have earthed these up already but have been so busy I haven’t gotten around to it, they by rights should have also been affected by the frost but no issues there at all. All my salad plants are growing bigger, but not ready for harvesting yet but there will be spinach and rocket and radishes soon. The herbs seem to like the longer days and are responding well, soon I shall be using my garden herbs in cooking.

Finally I have noticed a few lavender seedlings starting to germinate, perhaps I sowed these a little early, but it is two months since I sowed them.

I am really pleased at the pace at which everything is happening, I just need to speed up my soil prep in readiness, it’s a shame I didn’t get the allotment even a few weeks sooner so I wouldn’t be playing catch up, and I could have used the frost to break up the soil, it’s slower waiting for rain and sunshine to do so!

Green Garden Gate

Veggie Plant Sale

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!

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

Tomato seedlings transplanted in greenhouse with the beasties!

I’ve now transplanted all my tomato seedlings, there’s more than I thought! They all pretty much protested the move, despite a soak in a dilute organic seaweed feed. These are the heritage varieties Golden Sunrise, Black Russian, Outdoor Girl and Craigella which all seemed to like being in a propagator on the windowsill, if possibly a little leggy. Maybe I might consider a grow light next season.

transplanted seedings protesting the move

This will be their first night in the greenhouse, fingers crossed they like it! I did sow a few extra seeds so that I have plenty of contingency for losing some due to pests etc. I have already given some as gifts, veggie plants make a great housewarming present.

tomato seedlings starting to perk up again in the greenhouse

The greenhouse is getting a little full now as I am keeping things high up until the slug pubs do their job. I have two types of trap, but they both have cider in them, mainly because its leftover from our recent BBQ and I’m not a fan of it. It’s working a little, but I did notice one slug had a drink and escaped. The coriander seems to be recovering ok although I am wondering if I need to buy  some real ale instead… just for gardening purposes of course!

I’m not sure when the tomatoes might be big enough and strong enough to withstand the slugs – I need to research!

There is a bunch of ants that want to make the greenhouse home, they had a dose of hot water to get them to move on, it’s not entirely worked. I had a look at something like this, perhaps this might be needed if they’re still there next month.

On Saturday I sowed some more peas and beans for successive crops, they are in propagators in the greenhouse, the blog is showing me that these took 10-11 days to germinate, so just over a week to go. I want them a certain size before I risk a full frontal slug attack in the beds!

I think that my flower seeds were eaten by the slugs, so I have re-sown those today.

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

Sprouting garlic, tomato and mini-greenhouse

garlic sprouting

My garlic cloves are sprouting!

Those who’ve read earlier posts will remember I have had problems with locals cats in the beds. Well I am happy to report that the cats are mostly avoiding the beds these days and part of that I think is down to the smell of the garlic cloves planted recently.

tomato Maskotka seedlings

The Maskotka tomatoes were really starting to need more space to grow, the other varieties planted later (but in propagators cells) were starting to put them to shame. I think my experiment of re-using egg boxes has been successful in that I now know that it’s not a very good idea! I planted them into both Compostapots and traditional plastic pots, I wonder if there will be any difference between them.

There’s now a hand-made extra shelf in the mini-greenhouse, mainly to give a bit more storage, but to also keep seedlings that like it a little warmer higher up. I have noted that the slugs like the plants lower down so I’ve taken everything off the floor for now and installed a slug trap (cider in a tin can). My poor coriander really was being eaten to ground level every night so fingers crossed this recovers. I hope to reduce the slug population here before I need to plant my tomatoes and cucumbers in the grow bags!

Speaking of tender, I put my cucumber seedlings in the mini-greenhouse overnight for the first time last night and was reading several weather apps worried that it might go as low as -1°C and I possibly went a little OTT in putting a small terracotta oil lamp (fuelled by olive oil) on the grass at the bottom at 2am so as to keep the temperature up above freezing. I checked it first thing this morning and it appears to have worked perfectly, there was no chill in the air inside the mini-greenhouse.

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

 

 

Potting on cucumber plants

 

 

cucumbers just after potting on

The cucumbers really needed potting to have more room to grow, so they have been potted on now, although they appear to be a little upset about this, so they’re having some TLC on the windowsill currently, fingers crossed they perk up!

The peas are looking bigger;

 

 

There are two or three good seedlings of each variety.

The sweet peas are growing very slowly, according to a recent Gardener’s Question Time this is normal:

The chard is starting to show it’s colours, you can see which are red or yellow or white already:

The broad beans are also sprouting, but slowly:

Tomato seedlings smell tomatoey!

I’m really impressed that all the tomato seedlings are already smelling of tomatoes. The true leaves are really starting to grow now, I think tomorrow might be the day to pot them up!

I have one or two late germinations, as you can see below, the smaller seedlings. I’ll wait a while and see how they go.

 

A while back I accidentally tore the first leaves off one of the Maskotka seedlings, surprisingly it’s showing signs of recovery, a very robust variety!

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon

 

French Pink Garlic

Garlic being planted at the front of the bed

A little sunshine today warranted digging in compost to the beds and planting the pink French garlic. As I understand it, these cloves will be a deterrent to cats (and any mice that might be in the vicinity) and a few spare cloves in the greenhouse given a squeeze now and then should deter white fly. Three huge bulbs managed to supply 45 cloves, the fattest of which I’ve planted for growing in the veggie beds, the smaller ones in the flower beds to try to deter cats, if good garlic comes of this, ah well! There’s some more to be planted, but they can wait a while until the next bed is ready to start being filled.

I’ve had to plant them at the front of the beds as they shouldn’t be grown too close to peas and beans as they stunt their growth. Peas and beans will eventually be grown up the fences on these beds, with outdoor variety tomatoes hung from the fence posts. The garlic is however good for a lot of the other plants I am growing, as would several of the herbs I am growing.

overnight cat poo prevention

More cat protection was required as previous efforts were ineffective, we have very acrobatic cats in Waddesdon! Hopefully the above will mean I no longer have to dig carefully.

Green Garden Gate Waddesdon