Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

I posted a while ago that a lot of out Spring sown onion sets were bolting. It turned out that only a handful went to seed. The rest have happily filled out so much that 80% or so are ready to harvest. I’m going to leave them for a week or so, then pull them up. The plan is to fill the space with carrots - if all goes to plan, the ground will have served us twice in one season, and we’ll be eating some nice Christmas carrots! Either way, i can’t wait to start eating them, particularly the delicious looking red ones…it’ll be a while though as we have loads. I am going to make a point of learning how to plait them correctly this year, rather than just hanging them up individually in the shed, a la last year.

This theory of using the ground twice in a year is a bit of a ‘Mantra’ for us here at Vegmonkey and the Mrs.  We have already grown a crop of early potatoes and Japanese ‘Senshyu’ Onions in the bed closest to the house, and it now has sweetcorn and courgettes growing well…and it’s only mid July. Also, as i posted yesterday, the second lot of cauliflowers have gone into the space the first lot came out of.

They key i think is having the foresight to plant the seeds and have things ready to fill the space. I’ve ended up with an excess of tomato plants and a spare courgette, which is never bad!

The Japanese onions i planted ages ago are all starting to come good.  The tops have flopped over and yellowed, and most of the bulbs have swelled. I was in doubt a while ago as to whether or not to bother with these, but i suppose that nothing needs the ground until now, so it seems worthwhile.

The ones above are the ones which began to have seed heads growing on them (bizarrely a few are no bigger than the sets we planted!), we’ve harvested about another 10 or so since them which were a lot bigger, and had the beginnings of a papery coating.  The only problem with the Senshyu variety is they don’t keep long.

As the maincrop onions are getting near edible too, it seems we will have onions right up until Christmas, which is nice

Have just watched gardeners’ world and feel compelled to write a post. I read somewhere recently that Joe Swift was ridiculed, for his use of a rotavator to clear his plot.  Rotavating the weeds in means he will have a real problem with weeds in the near future and for much longer. I am having my first problems with bindweed this year, and am currently looking at the best way to rid the plot of weeds without having to resort to spraying.

It also annoyed me a little that he had all that earth ‘delivered’ right to his plot…i found it a lot harder than that lugging it through the house and certainly didn’t have as much help. It feels a little like Berryfields has been re-located to an allotment site in North London!

Finally on this topic, isn’t the whole point of raised beds that they can be accessed from ALL SIDES! Joe’s are triangular and diamond shaped and are huge. Having raised beds makes absolutely no sense at all if they are going to be trampled all over and the soil compacted (by his children in the show).

I watch Gardeners’ World for exemplar practice, and usually really enjoy the parts about growing food. Carol and Monty (having a rest!) never disappoint.  Monty’s own garden shows that….the perfect example.

In my own garden the ‘Spring Leaves’ above have been planted out and are growing well. The snails love them but the plants are growing slowly. I’ll post on them again when we start eating them, which should be within a couple of weeks…

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 Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli we planted back in March is still growing, somehow surviving a battering from the wind and an invasion of cabbage white butterflies - it should by rights, be dead. However, it will hopefully produce spears around February time. Considering our small space though, it’s a lot of nothing over a long period of time.  So this is the plan for next year

Summer Purple - Sow March to April.  Harvest June to October (this is very early!)

Rudolph (sometimes spelt Rudolf) - Sow March - May. Harvest Nov to Feb

Cardinal - Sow April to May. Harvest March - April

This way we can have an early variety for eating June onwards, and a maincrop that can be grown in a large pot and transplanted in late August time, and can grow into the space previously occupied by the first plant. The third variety (Cardinal) will be planted out in the next bed, Legumes, as by the time the broccoli needs the space, all of the beans, peas and sweetcorn will be coming to an end, which it means we can have broccoli all the way from June to April….and not pay those extortionate supermarket prices. That’s 10 months a year!

During the summer, we will have to cover the brassica bed with either a large frame covered in enviromesh or fleece this year to protect it a little better.

Curiosity got the best of me a few days ago. Those parsnips’ leaves were getting ever bigger and i wanted to know if those aphids we spotted earlier in the season had managed to nibble down to the root or if it had survived.

So i chose the largest one, and pulled, like with carrots…but nothing! Ten minutes later, and with the help of a spade, i managed to get the parsnip out without damaging it too much. The rest followed, some spindly, some perfectly straight. As the soil is quite rich and sandy, i don’t think some of the parsnips liked it hugely much. One looked as though it had been eaten by something (below) and got binned, one or two got eaten (not sure what by!) and the rest got buried in sand and put in the shed.

I know they can be left in the ground until needed, but the ground is needed for Japanese Onions for the winter.

Not a huge harvest. I think as it is such a small space, it might have to be taken over by a few extra carrots instead next year or maybe some leeks…

We planted about 10 seeds of Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli (2 c 1 l!) back in April in the Brassica bed. They grew nicely, so we thinned out a few and gave them away. We left 3, which is really 2 too many for the metre square space they are in. However, they have grown nicely and are now ‘uge! They have taken a bit of a battering by the wind lately and have had to be staked to stop them falling over, but just to take the weight…no string or ties. As this is ‘early,’ it will start producing tasty florets around March time. The ‘later’ variety starts, as the name suggests in April.

As the Brassica bed will be used next April for the carrot, parsnips, leeks and onions, it will need to be clear, so that will probably mean sacrificing the plants before they have finished producing.

To compensate for this next year we will be planting ‘Extra Early Rudolph’ next April so it will be ready by Feb and we’ll have it for a lot longer!

The perils of trying to grow all year round in a small garden are huge! I’m not looking forward to trying to get the manure into the maze at the base of the plants in a few weeks!

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.

3 of the last 5 weeks have been spent digging out nearly 10 tonnes of rubble, earth, bricks etc. from the back garden between the house and the veg garden. The wall that separates the veg beds from the rest of the garden  is 4 bricks high, and not bad for a first attempt if i do say so myself! It needs a good clean though, to get the excess mortar off. The block paving  is a mixture of blue bricks (for the table and chairs to go on) and red bricks (for the path) - all reclaimed. They have been laid on a bed of sand and the edge bricks have been concreted in - after the pic was taken to keep the whole thing in place.

All the landscaping has taken my attention slightly off the garden, which incidentally is producing an abundance of carrots, runners, the odd early parsnips, courgettes, parsley, little cherry toms and big onions! I think tomorrow will involve some planting…before i have to go back to work on Monday, and the summer disappears…

Albeit, a little browner (redder!) than a couple of weeks ago, after 2 weeks in the Dominican Republic on honeymoon. I must say we have both missed being out in the garden, but you can’t have it all!

In the garden, not as much has happened as we would have hoped. The sunflowers are the big story… 3 having reached 13ft and collapsing, without even flowering. A few lessons learnt from that, as even though the 5 or so that are left look good, they have leeched all the goodness out of the cucurbit bed, leaving us with only a couple of decent sized round courgettes and one standard one. That also means the pumpkin and squash plants have done pretty much nothing either!

The runner beans, carrots, spring onions, bulb onions, tomatoes and ’krakatoa’ chillies have all grown great guns and are providing us with a plentiful harvest. Sadly, the slugs have been enjoying our holiday too, although not to hugely devastating effect.

All winter veg (parsnips, leeks, early purple sprouting broccoli) are still growing well, although the turnip and swede seeds i planted about a month ago are taking a while to develop. Darned English weather!

Lots of tidying up to do tomorrow…