Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

  Don’t mesh with us!                       We will not co-opper-ate…

Ello’ it’s the Mrs here, I’ve finally got around to doing another post!

Every single night, just before bed, VM can be found crouching around the veggie beds on a hunting spree for slugs with his weapon of choice - a pair of scissors! From my safe haven indoors, being too squeamish to look, I also hear the occasional crunching of snails under an unforgiving foot. I wouldn’t normally be one for advocating the brutal killing of our squelchy friends, but when it comes to protecting our veggies then I’ll happily turn a blind eye!

Over the year we have tried to tackle the beasts in many different ways and it certainly seems to be our biggest challenge to date…and continues to be so! One very recent effective method for us though has been the use of chicken wire - both by laying it over seedlings in trays and by creating an upright barrier around the maturing plants. We have found it needs to be adjusted quite a lot with the courgettes as they keep on spreading outwards, but so far we’re really happy with the results.

Come and have a go if you think you’re ‘ard enough!

At the start of the season we bought some nematodes, having been impressed with them last year (however we now think that was down to the fact that the raised beds were newly filled and therefore no existing slugs were present). Annoyingly this year, no dramatic improvement has been noticed - especially frustrating when the little blighters cost so much.

My favourite of the defences is our copper tape, mainly because I think it looks good! We have placed it all the way around the beds and It does seem to do an okay job at keeping the slugs and snails out but obviously not if they’re in the soil already.

We’ve experimented with many options - coffee grounds, egg shells, beer traps (why waste it!) and sawdust to name a few, but none seem as fun to VM as using his bare hands!

    Senshyu                             Red Baron

We have about 180 onions in the ground at the moment if i remember rightly. The Japanese overwintering ones - Senshyu - have been in from about September (about 40). One is a nice size, and is ready for eating, 15 or so are small and edible, and the rest are weedy. Two have bolted. Bolting is bad as the onion grows a hard stem right though it, and tops this off with a flower…if i let it!

The purpose of planting these was to use the ground overwinter but it’s getting too close to the summer now, and they may have to come out as small onions, rather than full blown ones. Better than nothing though.

In this years onion bed, i planted about 120 sets (60 red, 60 white). Last year i bought heat treated ones from Wilkos. They were cheap and, being heat treated, didn’t run to seed. This year i thought i’d try a couple of different varieties, bought untreated sets from a reputable garden centre, and about 10 have already bolted. Interestingly, it is only the red ones that have bolted. The bolting is more than likely due to a combination of the hot weather, and the distinct inability of the raised beds to maintain any moisture!

Aside from this, the rest of the onions are growing very nicely and are we are well on course to produce about 150 onions from 2m square. I’ve chopped the bolted ones up, got rid of the hard centres and filled a bowl in the kitchen…we’ll be having those tomorrow night.

Being a primary school teacher means i get more extended holidays than most people. This enables me to spend lots of time out in the garden during the main planting time of Easter, but also to get on top of things during the Winter season. The last day or so has been spent looking at the successes, failures and ‘missing parts!’ of last year’s veg planting plan and doing lots of scribbling and crossing out to improve it.

The main changes are:

1. The plot will be a lot fuller (i forgot to plant many ‘leaves’ this year and hardly any winter veg that grew.)

2. There will be no flowers growing in the beds (they will have their own pots…somewhere as they seemed to take over, particularly the sunflowers, as the beneficial insects are only good if there is space to grow!)

3. Potatoes will be added into the rotation (i’ve decided that First Earlies can go in before the leeks need the space.)

4. The colours have been changed to make the plan easier to read.

I have included the ‘winter veg planner’ below. Click it or print to make it easier to read. This is the best quality i could get it before it became too large for the page! Things like tomatoes, sweetcorn, lettuces etc and herbs will all be grown in pots, hanging baskets or in the beds where there is space (!?). I will add a section for these later next week. I know a few people have been following some parts of the plan. I hope that things have worked, and would love to hear about any successes, failures, questions or recommendations!

I know the plan may look a bit ‘much’ but i know that this way, we are more likely, via the 4 year rotation, to have less diseases in each veg family, to know exactly what and where we can grow and to grow plants in an order so that the previous years plants prepare the soil for the next years!

 Happy planning!

The sunflowers, which i see as an intregral part of the veg garden at this time of year, as they are so high and add so much colour….matched only by the beans in our garden, have been both a success and a failure this year.

Why i hear you shout! Well, we planted two varieties - the standard varieties which shot up to about 10ft then fell over before flowering, and the amazing multicoloured variety called ‘Magic Roundabout.’ It is F1, but we only planted one of them, and it reached only 6ft, didn’t have a stupidly chunky stem and has produced almost 40 little sunflowers from the one stem….and is sprouting out all over the place. Definately a must for next year.

Ironic, however, is that the photo is of the generic sunflower.

We bought some Lillies from a well-known supermarket to see what would happen and they have flowered beautifully. Sounds awful that! Bought! (Can’t wait ’til the yellow lillies appear too….). It makes me want to grow lillies from seed, as i’ve seen so many amazing varieties, and they are so expensive to buy in the shops.

We planted poached egg flower, foxgloves, candytuft, and marigolds so far this year, but it only the Lily that has given us any colour so far. To be honest, i think next year the flowers will have to go somewhere other than in the beds as they take up a lot of room, and are strangling stuff!

I see the patio being changed into a flower bed at some point….

The African Marigold seedlings (well, we decided we needed a bit of colour in amongst the tens of shades of green!) are growing nicely within their mini-cloches. They are old lemonade bottles trimmed down and placed lightly over the seedlings. This serves as protection from beasties, and heats up the soil inside, so the plants grow quicker.

When they are about 2 inches tall, we’ll remove the protection. The (very) mini sweetcorn seedlings are starting to appear, after the first batch were munched just after they had appeared above the soil, so they have also been protected.

Second time lucky?! The sprinkling of evening rain may have helped.