This is summer?

The last few days have been very wet, very cold, and with a strong northerly wind - not like summer at all!
The picture on the left shows part of my plot, which is flooded. This is not surprising, as the whole site is on clay. Even with deep digging, there is an impermeable layer just under the surface, and even if we get no more rain (unlikely) it will take a week or more to soak in/evaporate.At least I won't have to water in the near future!


The picture on the right shows my fine-meshed,
anti-butterfly 'tent', which has been partly demolished by the wind. This will have to be repaired, but I will wait until the wind reduces. However, it is still butterfly-proof, so all my brassicas look OK.
Of course, what we could do with now is a period of warm, dry weather, to ripen the strawberries, which are coming on well. I wonder ....
Still to plant out (it's been far too cold this week) are courgettes, sweetcorn and butternut squash. Maybe next week?

Strawberries soon!

This is my strawberry patch, which I started last year on my 'fifth' plot, ie a quarter plot adjacent to mine. All are now netted, with straw underneath, and with plenty of slug pellets! The ones in the foreground are young plants, taken from runners last year, so although they will have some fruit - you can see the flowers - it will not be much. However, the older plants in the background have lots of flowers and should, in a couple of weeks, give a lot of fruit. Later on this year, there will be more runners, so I will fill up the plot when they have rooted.


In other places, I have planted out both French and runner bean plants, and also some brassicas - purple sprouting broccoli and cabbages. Still to plant out are the most tender plants - sweetcorn, courgettes and butternut squash. We should be past the chance of frost now, but the soil is still quite cold. However, we have had a couple of nights of rain, and the weather should now be warming up.

getting on

This is my hot bed, with lettuce (ready in a couple of weeks) beetroot and carrots. I have now taken the glass roof off, as there is no frost forecast for the next few days - indeed, it will be very warm and dry, which makes a change!
Elsewhere on the plot, I have planted various seeds, and of course my seed potatoes, which have just started to show above the surface, but so far the parsnip seed does not appear to have done anything.

At home, in the greenhouse, I have planted runner beans and French beans. These have just started to sprout, and should be ready to plant out in June. Now I must plant courgettes, sweetcorn and butternut squash.

Is it spring?

I posed the question 'Spring??' last time, as (despite the date) it had been cold and wet. Well, today I went up to the plot and it snowed! However, I have planted out some pea seedlings, which I have covered with a green mesh cloche (after putting down slug pellets of course!) then with a fine mesh, so they should be OK. Whether they will actually grow is another matter! The broad beans in the background have been in a while, and have made no growth so far.Perhaps next week will be warmer .... I have also sown some beetroot, lettuce and carrot seeds, as a follow-on to those I planted in my hot bed. Those, by the way, are doing quite well. the potatoes have not yet shown above ground - maybe they know something about the weather that I don't!

At home, I have just sown some French bean and runner bean seeds, and in the next couple of weeks will sow sweetcorn and butternut squash. Hopefully it will be very considerably warmer when they are ready to go out.

Spring??

Today is the first time I have been to the plot since my last post! It's been cold and wet (mainly) and I've also been very busy. It started hailing as I left ...

These are a few calabrese (broccoli) seedlings that I was given, and that I planted out today. I put some lime and Blood, fish and bone fertiliser onto the soil, and dug it in, then put in the seedlings very firmly, watered them well, and put some slug pellets round them before covering with a green mesh to keep the birds off.

I also planted some potatoes. These are a slug resistant variety - last year there was a lot of slug damage on my potatoes - called Sarpo Mira. These also apparently have good resistance to blight, and are very tasty. We shall see!

I said last time (19 March) that I had made up my hot bed. Well, I planted some lettuce, beetroot and carrot seed, and these have now come up, hooray! Hopefully, I will be picking some early crops at the end of May or in June. Everything of course depends on the weather ....

Springing into action (well, stumbling really)

I have just planted my parsnip seeds. Germination is usually not very good, and you have to use fresh seed - more than a year old and there will be zero germination. In order to get decent sized roots, I push the end of a crowbar into the soil - the deeper, the better, but a foot is enough, unless you are showing them - and then wiggle it around to give a tapering hole, with the top as large as the top of the parsnip. Then fill the hole with good compost, and put 3 or 4 seeds on top. Cover with an inch of compost, water well and cover with a plank for 3 weeks as they are very slow to germinate. Then remove the plank, and when the seedlings show, thin to 1 parsnip per hole

I have also started off my hot bed. (You may remember that after digging it out, it filled with water. That has now drained away.) I put 4 big bags of fresh manure in the hole, then trampled it down and topped it off with a couple of bags of compost. Then a sheet of glass on top to keep it warm, and in a couple of days I will plant lettuces, beetroot and carrots, hopefully for an early crop.

Too much rain!

It's been 4 months since I wrote a blog - 4 months with LOTS of rain. I have only been to my plot a few times, but have just started resurrecting it for the coming season. So far, I have put chippings on all my paths (when it was too wet to get on my plots!), and put manure and compost on two of the plots. Now I must dig everything.
This is my 'hot-bed', ha ha! I dug it out a little while ago and it immediately filled up with water. When (if!) it drains, I will put in about a foot of horse manure, tread it down, and top it with a few bags of compost. Hopefully it will then warm up (especially with the glass lid on) so I can get some early crops.


This is one of my plots, with manure and compost, but not yet dug of course. It should have all been dug in the autumn, but it was too wet. I started digging it this afternoon, although it was still too wet really - very squelchy underneath. There will be broad beans in here soon - they are planted in pots in my greenhouse - then will come peas, runner beans and sweetcorn. I have also planted some leek seeds, but these will be planted out much later. My potatoes are chitting on a bright windowsill at home, and will go in the next plot, with beetroot, lettuce, French beans and carrots. Then in plot 3 there will be onions (some planted over winter, some a few weeks ago in my greenhouse), garlic, leeks and parsnips. To complete the rotation, plot 4 will have all the brassicas - cabbages, swedes etc. This will be covered with a fine mesh net, to keep the butterflies off. Plot 1 (half of which I dug today) will be covered with a coarse mesh net, to keep off the birds but to allow in the pollinators.