Says the song or in this case a along weekend.
We were away Friday to Sunday so had leave the seedlings, plot and pots to fend for themselves, after good watering of course. A nervous time for any gardener.
As soon as the front door was open the inspection began, and it looks like without our constant attention (or fiddling depending on your point of view), things have actually done rather well.
The sweetcorn and beans on the windowsill have really started now. I planted 24 sweetcorn pots (2 seeds per pot) and 19 now have at least 1 seedling. I'll thin down those with 2 later this week and put in more seeds to any that haven't appeared. (Some not shown)
There were 5 out of 24 beans showing when we left, now it looks like a mini forest. (Some not shown).
The Easy Pick Gold courgettes have all germinated, some of the pumpkins and a squash or 2.
Burpless Tasty Green cucumbers have a 100% germination rate while the Marketmore have only had 1 out 8 so far. Hopefully this is not another failure of the free magazine seeds, I'll give them a few more days.
On the plot our neighbour had his potatoes badly hit by a frost but the earthing up I did on Thursday saved ours. I have earthed up again today as the next couple of nights are looking likely to bring a snap air frost. After that we are in the clear for a week or so at least.
We are now officially eating home grown lettuce. Red and green salad bowl planted in Feb under the cloche. I think its fair to say the cloche experiment has been successful in bringing an early start to the eating season.
The Little Gems are doing ok under their cloche while the Sierra are proving very slow. It could just be that it is still cold, or that I have been starting them in pots and transplanting them. I have been reading that they don't like this so may switch to growing in individual cells and potting on the whole cell to reduce root disturbance.
I love home grown salad so happy to be eating it now.
I spotted the first broad beans on the overwintered plants today, small but they are starting to form. Time for some extra watering.
Before we left I had dismantled the netting and cage over the brassicas and removed everything except 1 sprouting broccoli plant. I started to dig over the ground ready for this year, which hadn't been dug for 2 years and it was like concrete. I took a while but once the biggest lumps were broken down I put in the last of the manure I had and threw a good many buckets of water at it. This section will get the contents of the compost bins and a good few handfuls of chicken manure pellets before it's used again.
The next jobs are planting out the strawberries and trying to assemble the fruit cage frame I plan on using for brassicas next year, oh and prepping the bed for them...
Happy gardening folks..
2 comments:
Can't you transplant a seedling from a pot with two germinated into any pots that have none?
In the past we have had potato tops frosted but usually they recover.
Hi Sue
I've never tried it, I don't think they like being disturbed. I've put the rest somewhere warmer and we'll see what happens. I might try it though.
I get caught by the frost at least once a year :O(
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