Spring! Better luck this year

So, this blog really had bit a bit sad and lonely for the last year.  After last year's perils of torrential rain and flooding over much of the UK for most of the summer the ground was saturated, the slugs were everywhere. Literally no man standing after planting out your seedlings and leaving them overnight, and as for direct planting, pah!  They even ate all the developing pumpkins off a bought pumpkins plant.  I had even gone to the trouble of applying the trusty Nemaslug! I was not impressed.  But all is not lost, with every new Spring comes fresh opportunity and a new wave of hopefulness that this year there will be a bit of sun....even in England.

Turn the page and we find ourselves in March.  I have high hopes for March, even though a cold snap is promised near the middle of the month.  Undeterred I have made the majority of my seed purchases and made a hefty start to the weeding.  So what am I planning to grow this year?  So far the list is something like Leeks, Tomatoes, Jerusalem Artichokes, Courgette, Runner Beans, Peas, Potatoes, Kale and Chard.  I might end up putting a few patches of extras in though, my seed box overfloweth!  Again I am hoping to combine vegetables with pretty herbs and flowers in my perpetual thirst for an Alice Fowler style vegetable garden (seems I have made it harder for myself with long wide beds).  There are still some plants in from last year; strawberries and chives.  I've also planted this years Garlic (late!) as well as 3 of the biggest cloves of last years Elephant Garlic.

I must also mention that a very sad thing happened at the end of November 2012, Lenny, my oldest Greyhound died.  I am still pretty gutted about not seeing his furry, loving face any more, but consoling myself with the thought that he had lots of love from us, and a good long life full of seaside trips and castles and gardens since he was 8 (when I adopted him from kennels).  I have had him cremated and am keeping his ashes for now, when the others go I will mix their ashes and find a place to scatter them together.
A Greyhound should be free to run with the wind, as they did in life.  R.I P. my lovely little Lenny ♥

September - Mini Harvest

Had my own little mini harvest so thought I'd share the picture! Spuds (Rooster, and a few left over Maris Piper from last year), Carrots (the ones the carrot fly didn't ravage!), 2 different types of scalloped squash and kohl rabi (not bad roasted). Nom!

The rest of the harvest of Potatoes. I feel OK about this amount, much more reasonable than last years epic harvest of doom that we never managed to eat through.

Garlic! Pretty good I think, nice pale pink cloves. I seem to have picked pretty varieties of everything this year! These went into the ground last autumn, to be honest I think I left them a bit too long as they had sprouted extra cloves about the outside, I broke these off and they are in a bowl in the fridge to be used first.

My tomatoes did not ripen *sad face*. There are still a few tomato plants languishing outdoors but as an experiment, these ones, who were taking up space in the main vegetable beds have been ripped up and suspended upside-down in the sun in the extension. The Internet tells me this will allow the goodness to drain down the plant and they will ripen. I remain sceptical, but...who knows! Worth a go, and if not there's always Fried Green Tomatoes!

I have cleared out all the spend summer veg. Still in the ground are scalloped squash, pumpkins (planted too late I think, they look a bit sickly), Parsnips, Onions, Kale, Kohl Rabi, Swiss Chard a Salsify or two and some Cauliflower (purple!). In this month go Broad Beans, Garlic, various winter salad leaves, Toughball Onions, early Spring Onions and possibly some other stuff I have forgotten. The land with nothing on has some field beans as green manure.

Finally, Nigella seed heads removed before they open and self seed all over the place again (nice yes, but a bit in the way). I think I will suspend them upside-down in a bag and collect the seeds.

March...on Spring! (hohoho*cough*)

I think....it might be Spring! Since my last entry I have lightly dug most of the garden in preparation for planting. Since I was totally disorganised at buying the green manure on time (plants that grow overwinter and keep the nitrogen in the soil) mostly the soil was bare over winter, save for the autumn/winter veg. This means that in 2 beds I have allowed the nitrogen to be leached out through the soil over winter, the other had peas, and their clever nitrogen fixing roots that I left in after I chopped my peas down will have helped to keep the nitrogen in. On that bed I added some leaf mold that I made from the leaves collected on my drive last year. On the other 2 beds which are very sandy I have dug in some of my compost from the compost bin, which is now bursting with worms (great for the compost...not so great for me *twitch*). I discovered this when I opened the bottom hatch and 5 shiny red worms dropped out and squiggled across the concrete, "Naaaaath...heeeeelp!?".

Last Saturday I went to The Edible Garden Show it was a fun day out and I did come back with a few ideas and lots of tips on chickens. Worth going for the animal tent alone, it had pigs and goats and many different types of chicken (I wish I had room for a Orpington). I also came back with an Oak Paper Potter. These are very handy little tools allowing you to create 4 small paper pots from one sheet of newspaper (no glue or water required, just roll it round the roller and scrunch the bottom in the press), I have already made a nice tray full of pots to plant my seeds and seedlings into (as you can see above). I intend to buy the watering rose tops you can buy for old drinking water bottles (bottle top waterers) so I can water my indoor seeds without washing them away (how clever!). I've planted some lettuce and baby carrots seeds directly in the ground, but I do plan to start off as many plants as I can in mini pots to avoid early slug damage when the seedlings are too small and tender to cope with being munched, and so I can replace things as we eat them...that's the plan anyway!

Mushrooms are growing in my walk in wardrobe...brown closed cap, and intentionally of course. Actually they aren't growing yet, they have just had the casing layer added and I'm waiting hopefully. They're in the walk in wardrobe bit as it's an outside wall in there, and so much cooler than the rest of our terraced house, so a good temperature for shroomies.

On the chicken side of things, I had to show you this. Nessa laid us a mini egg a week or two ago, sadly it wasn't chocolate (shame) but it is freakily small. I thought chickens only laid this sort of egg when they were just at 'point of lay', but the web tells me this isn't the case. It's known as a 'wind egg' and can also happen to older hens. It's an egg without a yolk. An interesting site about abnormal eggs can be found here.

It's hard to imagine that last year in March the garden looked liked this: