So here's the plan.....

I like to try and stick to a crop rotation plan, there is usually a little tweak required every year, something doesn't come up, you get given something new or more than expected germinates so you think why not put it in. So here is this years plan. Having the cross paths splitting the beds does actually make things easier to manage.    

I'm pretty happy with things so far, I know there is a long way to go yet, so here's a run down of the progress so far. 

Bed 1

Nothing happening here, not even got the covers off yet. It just needs a little dig and its good to go but I have a good couple of weeks as some of the plants due to go in there haven't even come up yet. I'll probably add a couple of buckets of manure to the bits that was exposed over winter.

Bed 2

At the front the asparagus bed is getting into it's stride and if this keeps up it will effectively pay for the plot again this year.

The other half of the front bed if being used for quick growing crops such as lettuce, radish, turnip and beetroot. Once I get all the crops in other beds I'll mix them into the those and maybe use this space for something else. I'm thinking more ornamental this year. 

  

The back of the bed where the tomatoes and chillies will go has been dug and prepped ready.

Bed 3

I planted 24 stations of parsnips, with 4 seeds per station, so far 12 have come up, that's a 1/8th germination rate, don't you just love them! I've replanted the failed stations again.

The carrots are coming along nicely and onions seem to be enjoying life in the fleece tunnel which will continue for the next couple of weeks until the risk of allium leaf miner has passed..

At the back of the bed the Shetland Black potatoes are looking good and the space for the Oca plants is prepped.

Bed 4

The summer and winter cabbages are looking healthy in the small cage. Only 11 in total but how much cabbage can one man eat! In the big cage The kohl robi are started to swell, I've never grown these before so I'm watching them closely and the broccoli, sprouts and kale have settled into their new home quite nicely.

At the back are the arran pilot early spuds, some of which are a little behind but all showing now. There will be more oca in here once the danger of frost has passed.

Bed 5

The bean canes are up and the seeds are in. I've gone for the odd angle in the bed to make the best use of the space and put in different coloured varieties to make it look a little more interesting.

At the back of the bed the broad beans have plenty of flowers, but no pods yet, they are a dwarf variety so the wind hasn't ravaged them too badly this year. 

In the pea cage things are looking good, the germination rate has been very good, I thought about thinning them but I think I'll just leave it. The beetroot plugs I put in have taken nicely too.

Fruit Bed

I've finished clearing the old raspberries, weeds and herbs, dug it over and turfed the new paths. Once the turf takes I'll cut the edges and put in the boards. The strawberries have lots of flowers but no sign of and berries yet.

So that's where we are so far. As long as everything that is filling up all my window sills does its job we should have a lot more planting out to do soon.

Happy gardening folks!!

    

Where did the sun go?

Over the Easter weekend I got quite the tan working on the plot, this weekend not so much...

The great weather gave me the opportunity to plant out the summer cabbages and kohl robi seedlings in the brassica cages,  the marigolds in the borders and the beetroot seedlings in the pea cage where the pesky pigeons can't get their beaks on them!

The carrots are up and the rows look good with no big gaps, the parsnips I'm not so sure about, something is coming up in places but I haven't been able to 100% identify them as parsnips yet. This makes the weeding a rather perilous affair.

I put in a half row of radishes, turnips, Tom Thumb lettuces, red spring onions, beetroot and a row each of the pea varieties in the new pea cage. The radishes took a record 4 days to appear!

At home I've planted tomatoes, sweetcorn and chard in pots and had a good germination rate. The tomatoes are on the windowsill where they can get a couple of extra hours of light under the grow lamps, no leggy specimens for me this year I hope! The sweetcorn and chard are outside in the green house.

This weekend I wanted to get the broccoli, winter cabbages, sprouts and kale out too but it's still windy here in Essex and we are due a couple of cold nights this week so I'll leave it for a few days yet.

The red/white onions are now getting a bit big for their cells I don't think leaving them in there until the start of June is a good idea. I have been holding off planting them out until then to avoid the first wave of allium leaf miner but as I don't think they can wait I have invested in a fleece tunnel to cover them instead. I was going to buy one anyway to cover the leaks in Sept/Oct when the second wave arrives. I just need to wait for the wind to drop  a bit more so the tunnel doesn't end up next door.

I've finally made a start on clearing the fruit bed as well. There is a lot of weed clearing to do but hopefully it won't take long to do.  

The first veg crop from this season is not the usual radish, but the asparagus which has just started to produce. I'll waiting to see if the new crowns I put in last year do anything, I suspect they won't and that's the case I'll try growing some from seed next year.

The spuds are starting to poke through now, not exactly where I think I planted them but I'll take it. I've been earthing them up as the overnight temps can still be a bit low.

Happy gardening folks!

The Home Front

I managed to get the cage netting finished one chilly evening this week, I hate working with that stretchy green stuff, I can never get it quite straight and even, there was a lot of swearing, but apart from that its been a bit windy and cold for my liking on the plot. Fingers crossed I get to tackle the to do list down there this weekend.

At home though the window sills and mini green house are looking most productive.

The summer cabbages and kohl robi are doing very nicely, these will get planted out as soon as the brassica bed is uncovered and the small brassica frame has its lid made and netted. The winter cabbage, sprouts and kale have been potted on into some lighter compost and seem to be liking it, putting on a little growth spurt.

The onions are just starting to bulk up at the base, they have had a feed and put on a spurt too. These have to stay in the cells until June once the first allium leaf miners risk has passed. The Paris Silverskin are just starting to germinate on the bedroom window sill.

My Oca tubers are now poking through in their large pots on the windows sill. They were chitted first but seemed to be taking a while to come up, so I dug down and uncovered the tips of the chits just in case I had planted them too deep. There are signs of the first leaves just sprouting I will level the soil again once they get a bit bigger.

I put a couple of early tomatoes in as an experiment with the grow lights and they seem to be doing ok, I haven't really put them under the lights in the end but have just left them in the outside greenhouse, small but not getting leggy.

The leeks are still very small but they haven't been in long so I'll let them off.

Not everything has gone to plan. The sunflowers only managed a 50% germination rate and the pumpkin on a stick were a complete no show. I've planted some more of both in a different compost so fingers crossed.

The main tomato and sweetcorn  crop to plant this weekend!

Happy gardening folks!

The Great Outdoors

After 2 weeks away it was nice to get down the farm for a couple of Saturdays and make a start.

First a little house keeping, trimming all the grass paths, which only took 20 mins thanks to the raised beds, rather than the usual 2 hours, topping up the bark on the cross paths and a bit of weeding. 

Next was to plant the potatoes, as the pic shows they had got a bit carried away in the chitting department this year. They were under my bed as per usual so no idea why they went quite so mad, maybe I'm going soft and had the heating on more this year.

So that's the Arran Pilot and Shetland Black planted out. As a little experiment I planted the Arran Pilot 6 in one row, 5 in the next and 4 in the final, just to see how yields are affected. 

We are expecting a couple of cold nights so they are well earthed up.

Next was to plant out the broad beans, they have been out in a cold frame so are nicely hardened off. The farm can be a bit windy so they have string supports, it also has  lot of pigeons so CD bird scarers and finally slugs, so slugs pellets. Not much more I can do, they are on their own now.

I've put in 2 rows of parsnips and 2 rows of carrots and covered them with cloches to keep the temperature up and also to stop the rain capping over the soil. After last year I'm hoping for more than 2 parsnips!

I've built a pea cage for this year, without it the pigeons will eat more than me. I find covering things with nets that need removing for weeding and harvesting a time consuming pain in the preverbal. This one is high enough for me to stand in and I should be able to get 2 rows in there nicely.

I ran out of staples to finish the netting but I wasn't planning to plant the peas until next weekend anyway as we are due 3 days of rain this week. It's in the diary for next weekend.

As the first Saturday was nice and sunny a quick beer on the plot was called for.

Happy gardening folks!! 

Still frosty

First of all, apologies for the lack of pics on this one, I forgot to take them before I wrote this in a hurry before leaving for the airport...

In previous years there have been things sprouting under cloches on the farm at this time of year, but this year so far... nothing.

There are 2 reasons for this, firstly we are still getting some pretty impressive frosts and secondly I go away for 2 weeks shortly meaning popping in to water on the way home is a no no. Once I'm back hopefully it will have warmed up a little and we can get cracking. This doesn't mean we have been doing nothing, at home the sowing and potting has continued.

Every broad bean came up and they seem to like it out in the mini greenhouse. They will be planted out when I get back at the end of March, hopefully after the winds have abated.

The cabbages and Kohl Robi have been pricked out and are growing on nicely. They may go under cloches soon, I haven't decided yet.

The chillies are slowly germinating but taking their time. Once up they spend the day under the grow lamps to stop them getting leggy.

The Marigolds, unusually had a poor germination rate and had to have a second sowing, again with mixed results. I'm not sure quite what is going on here, they usually germinate under almost all conditions.

Onions germinated well, now thinned to one per cell they are getting their first proper leaves. I've been trimming them back to about 3-4 inches in height to stop them falling over. They seem to like the mini green house as well.

This weekend I planted some beetroot in cells. I've never done this before but as you can buy plug plants of beetroot I figured I'd give it a go. Also some Convululus and sunflowers, leeks, pumpkin on a stick and a couple of Apero tomato plants to see if the grow lights stop an early sowing going leggy.

I almost forgot these, under the bed the spuds and Oca tubers are chitting nicely.

When I get back things will start to ramp up with the main sowings of peas, parsnips, early carrots, and early spuds. I look forward to finally getting things moving on the plot.

Happy gardening folks!!

Lets get this party started....!

Or more to the point, lets get this planting started.

The 2019 season has officially started, last Saturday (9th), armed with a bag of John Innes compost and a well organised seed box I made a start on the planting over the weekend.

Downstairs on the cooler windowsill in the kitchen are marigolds, broad beans, white cabbages and kohl robi. While upstairs on the heated bedroom windowsill there are chillies and red and white onions.

A bit of recycling in this years planting equipment, a mixture of used mushroom trays and coffee cups from work.  Both have a bit of extra depth, and hopefully the broads will be pleased with the cups as they like a deeper pot apparently.

After a week, already putting in an appearance are the marigolds, white onions, cabbages and kohl robi and a couple of broads, not bad at all.

 

I want to start radishes, early carrots and salad off down on the plot under cloches but we are still getting quite a few severe frosts so I'll wait a couple more weeks before starting anything off down there.

Last year I had a lot of seedling failures and wasn't sure if it was down to the compost. This year I'm trying John Innes for the first time but I did make a bit of a boo boo. Instead of picking up number 1 compost for planting seeds I picked up number 2, which is for young seedlings. This means it has added zinc, I have yet to read what differences that makes, but surely as soon as a seed sprouts its a young seedling! I have noticed that the John Innes is more soil like, rather potting compost and may need careful watering as it retains a lot of it. The moisture meter may be on overtime.

Happy gardening folks!!  

Deliveries!!

Since the last post we've done, well pretty much nothing.... I don't like winter

I did make it down to the farm on a Saturday morning for a couple of hours when the weather was warmer to do a few general tasks but more of that later.

It is that time of year when things start popping through the letter box. This years seed order was a lot larger than the last couple of years but the seed tin did get a good clear out of the older seeds and things we've decided not to grow any more. 

We ordered from DT Brown and Mr Fothergill's this year and this beautiful little lot is what has arrived. This shot includes the pumpkins on sticks and blue bosque tomatoes we got from www.growyoursecretgarden.com. 

The Mr Fothergills seed potatoes arrived today too. This year I've restricted it to Arran Pilot for a nice early spud and Shetland Black, I've always fancied trying a different coloured variety.

One reason to restrict the spuds to 2 varieties was to make space for Oca. Also known as New Zealand Yams and originating from South America They can be used cold in salads with a citrus taste or roasted like potatoes. They have less pest problems than potatoes and are expected to catch on in the UK.

They aren't the cheapest thing to start off, 5 tubers for £7.99 but with some seed saving it should become cheaper. Excited to see how these turn out. As an added bonus the more observant may notice I got 6 instead of 5!.

Jobs wise, the compost bins have been moved to their permanent home. I put a thin strip of weed control fabric around the edges and between the bins leaving the bottom of them open to the soil and then used wood chips to hold it down. Should keep the weeds down and hopefully stop critters digging into the bin.  

Last years asparagus stalks have been cut down and composted and the bed weeded. It might get a top soil top up before the season start.

All the remaining carrots were dug up, none salvageable unfortunately and the ground dug over and the contents of the moved compost bins dug in ready for squashes and tomatoes. I might even put in a couple more bags of manure.   

We haven't planted anything at all yet this year but in the next couple of weeks the onions and leeks will be started from seed... I really must get the cold frame built!

Happy gardening folks!! 

Meet Percy..

As some of you will remember, 2018 was not my year for parsnips, something I'm normally quite good with. In fact we have only two this year.

We popped down to check covers etc over the weekend and decided to dig up this fellow, one of the cleanest parsnips I've actually ever grown, at the moment he is destined to be soup. 

Elsewhere there is very little left growing, just some chard, kale, slightly eaten cabbage, holey carrots and the last parsnip.

The Cape Gooseberries and Chillies have been killed off by the frost and once again the allium leaf miner struck and ruined what was once looking like a promising leek crop. That's 3 years in a row now I have had trouble with these pests.  I know a few fellow plot holders have also had issues, although it seems totally random who they hit. 

There doesn't seem to be any chemical control available but here is an extract from the RHS site regarding non chemical control

"Plants can be protected by covering them with horticultural fleece, or an insect-proof mesh such as Ultra-Fine Enviromesh, at times when the adult flies are active and laying eggs (March to April and October to November). Crop rotation must be used, as adult flies might emerge from pupae underneath the covering if susceptible plants are grown in the same piece of ground in successive years."

I will be growing onions and leeks from seed this year and am unlikely to plant them out before May, so it appears that my best hope is cover any unharvested crops for Oct-Nov. Guess we'll give that a try.

Happy gardening folks!

Food stockpiles and Brexit

Here are the farm we don't discuss politics but politics is impacting gardening it seems. 

I follow a few food preservation groups on facebook and ended up following a link to one where its members are seriously concerned about a disruption to the food supply following Brexit in March 2019. The members are building up their food supplies so they could survive a few weeks or even months by living off food in their cupboard.

The BBC has been covering this same topic with members of the public stockpiling along with company efforts to stockpile.

As one poster pointed out on facebook, March/April is possibly the lowest time of productivity yield in a garden. However a number of them have been making long term plans to maximize their winter vegetables like leeks as much as possible.

Some of my jarred chillis

Some have decided to start gardening this year, remembering the Dig for Victory efforts and how rationing in the UK was in effect during and after the war until 1954. 

Others are stockpiling vegetables in tins in the event that the electrical supply is disturbed. They're buying an extra few tins each week of things like carrots and potatoes along with basics like rice and lentils.

Independent of Brexit, here at the farm we try to preserve and stockpile food as much as possible, although Dicky has put his foot down at my frozen French bean stores (too soggy I've heard!)

We do have three spaghetti squash and five marrows still to see us through the next few months.

In the past I've jarred tomato sauce, salsa and chillis. There's nothing so nice as eating your own tomato sauce in the dead of winter. 

Dicky and his sister recall spending hours assisting their parents when the bean harvest came in. I'm not sure if they are really fond memories though!

Some of my dried and jarred chillis

I grew up near Amish country in America and those folks have big gardens and they preserve a lot. Granted there is a lot more growing and storing space in America but check out these photos of an Amish larder, it may give you canning envy!

How about you, has Brexit influenced your garden habits?

Snails in the rooftop garden!

My facebook recently brought up one of their 'photo reminders' where they remind you of what you posted in the past. Here is a recent one that popped up, when I went snail hunting!

My little rooftop terrace garden is four floors up. I am pretty organic up here, all my vegetable scraps and coffee grounds go into a compost bin.

Considering I'm off the ground and only bring up soil in commercial bags, I'm amazed that I have a plethora of living creatures up here like worms, bugs, snails and slugs. 

Periodically, i.e. when they start eating too much of my produce, I gather them all up and relocate them to a more suitable place at ground level in our public park or in woodland on the way to our allotment. If I don't clear them regularly every year, I end up with a situation like this when I skipped a year:

I'm not sure where they're coming from but I've eliminated a few sources:

1. Ground level: I live in a concrete jungle. They're not climbing up the side of the building.

2. Neighbours: My neighbours don't have plants so they're not hitching a ride on a pot or in soil.

My current thinking is to blame the birds! As I have a roof terrace garden, I still have additional roof space which is above my living space. We regularly get birds up here: crows, sea gulls, magpies and occasionally sparrows.

The bring a mix of gifts to my rooftop. They like to perch on the TV ariel and over time the pots below this area started to grow a variety of plants that were not from me such as rapeseed and general weeds. I have since moved these pots.

In addition to their organic matter the crows LOVE a good takeaway and we have plenty fast food shops nearby that cater to drunk folks on a Saturday night who leave their empty boxes in inappropriate places. The clever crows will bring up the leftovers, in particular, the fried chicken remnants. Every time that we have a good storm I am guaranteed to find chicken bones or various dead bird bits on my rooftop.

I much prefer the friendly magpie. He seems to have stolen a ping pong ball from the local outdoor community tables (looked like an egg?).

Imagine the conversation I had with my neighbor who also has a terrace, we're separate by frosted glass but have 5 inches of clearance so things can blow underneath. 'Excuse me kind neighbour, are you missing a ping pong ball?'

In the meantime I found some slugs in the lettuce that I picked this week. They're back! Time to go hunting again...

If anyone has any other ideas of where they're coming from, feel free to comment.  :)

Book Review on the Dig for Victory Campaign

As the nights draw in I find myself under a wool blanket (and usually a cat) with a good book. I wanted to share my recommendation for The Spade as Mighty as the Sword by Daniel Smith.

I picked this little gem up a few months ago at one of those book stores where everything is discounted. If you're interested in the Second World War and how the Dig for Victory campaign came about, this book gives a full overview.

It gives background about how the nation sourced its food prior to the war, how government policy came into being, how commercial and farm production changed and how each person was encouraged to take part.

It does have a few pages in the centre with black and white photos.

A poster from the campaign at the Duxford Imperial War Museum 

The most interesting thing that I learned from it is that the original campaign was not called 'Dig for Victory' but instead was 'Grow More Food.' In 1939 it went through a re-branding effort which seems to have paid off.

One of the Amazon reviewers stated that the book isn't much of a nail biter. I find that sort of true, it does read like a history textbook at times, dense with facts. However, it is also filled with personal anecdotes of how people reacted to government policies which balances it out.

Another neat things that I learned from this book: by 1943, 25% of fresh eggs were coming from home coops, can you imagine that today?

It also states that in 1942, 55 - 60% of families were growing some part of their own food.

If you're interested in this time period or how the nation produced and consumed food at the time, I'd highly recommend this book.

Overwintering Thai basil, will it work?

I love cooking with fresh herbs! The rooftop garden has some basic ones that I've had for years like mint, oregano, rosemary and thyme. My lavender is lovely in the spring too; the bees like its purple flowers.

I mentioned on an earlier post that I haven't brought some of my containers inside for winter due to concerns about the plants being toxic for the cat.

The only plant that I have been able to bring indoors is my Thai basil as basil is non-toxic for cats.

This was one that I started from seed in early June:

I wouldn't bother if it was 'regular,' i.e. Mediterranean basil. According to internet research, Thai basil is a perennial in the warmer climates of Thailand. In prior years I've left my plants out and they won't survive the cold temperatures. It does have a much tougher stem than Mediterranean basil.

I am a 'try and see if it works' type of gardener.

I brought it in six weeks ago. The wisdom I gathered from the internet was to continue to cut off the flowers to ensure that it doesn't think its growing cycle is done. Sure enough, once per week I cut off the new flowers and it is continuing to make new leaves.

It does have quite a scent though when I trim it, so maybe not one to have indoors if you're don't like strong smells although I don't notice it after an hour.

This was immediately after trimming it, kitty boy will give it a sniff but otherwise he's leaving it alone. As he is curious and gets into anything and everything we might stand half a chance on this one!

Lettuce in the rooftop garden

Heather here, giving Dicky a week off from writing. :)

Whilst most of our crops come from the farm, I am lucky to have a sunny rooftop terrace where I do container gardening. As I'm four flights off the ground I get around six extra weeks of growing time due to the sheltered nature of the rooftop. Also it catches the morning sun which warms up the concrete under my containers.

As Dicky was busy getting the farm ready for winter, I've been planting and getting things sorted up here.

Here is my lettuce as of today, November 8, 2019! On the left is 'salad bowl' and just next to it is 'lamb's lettuce'. They are both hardier varieties. Salad bowl can be sowed into August for harvesting in October, but I'll probably get a few more weeks out of this one.

We just had some of the left one last night; it was tasty with no hint of bitterness.

Here is one of the two remaining chilli peppers that I still have going. The variety is called 'Razzamataz.' This one was a late bloomer compared to the more easy going jalapenos and habaneros.

Then it took ages for them to start to turn red.

I'd like to bring it in to try and overwinter it but I'm seeing mixed research online about chilli plants being potentially toxic to cats. For now I'll leave it as is and take my chances that it will survive the winter.


While we've had a few nights of overnight freezing in our corner of Essex, I haven't had any frost up here yet. It needs to get consistently cold, like a few days in a row where it gets below freezing and not above 5 C during the day.

The eagle-eyed among us may notice a fern-like plant to the right of the chilli, it's dill.

It came in a multi-pack of herb seeds. I don't actually use dill in cooking but I planted the seeds to see what it looked like in plant form.

Apparently it's quite happy up here. It went to seed and I composted it and magically it appeared again....and again....and again.
 
One more plant to show you today, my avocado! I eat a lot of avocados and put the stones into my compost bin. It gets so stinking hot up here in mid-summer (even when we don't have a 'super summer' like this year) that they sprout.

I hate to see a plant unappreciated so I sold a few on ebay. Then I freecycled some. I took them to my gym as a freebie for members. Dicky put them in the 'free' area of our allotment and thankfully our fellow gardeners took them off our hands. My final avocado plant tally was over 30!

Here is one of the last ones. They do not tolerate frost but it's another one that I am hesitant to bring indoors due to possible toxicity to the cat.

 I hope you enjoyed this little autumn tour of some of the things that are still growing on my rooftop.