Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

We have officially been up and running in the veg garden for 6 months now. It’s amazing the amount of things we’ve grown and lessons we’ve learnt.

Roots bed - Carrots and parsnips harvested and stored in moist sand in wooden boxes from the local wine shop (it’s amazing what a free bag of veg can bring!), onions hung in shed from wire - but mostly eaten. The leeks have grown a lot of leaf but i dug one up and it wasn’t very long.  So i’ve put a load of compost in between the rows to encourage more to go white. Next year they get planted deeper!

In the space where the carrots and parsnips were, we’ve planted a hundred japanese onion sets (covered with a homemade cloche to encourage growth). These will start producing onions big enough to eat about April time, and will be all done by June/July so the leeks can go in in their place. On the left of the roots bed are the carrots that will hopefully be ready by December!

Brassica bed - The height is purple sprouting broccoli. Very tall, covered in annoying whitefly (although it aparently doesn’t damage the plants too much), wants to fall over. I hope it actually produces! There are a few caulis in there growing nicely, as are the 4 brussel sprout plants. If only we could grow Christmas Puddings too, we’ve almost have a whole Christmas dinner!

Legumes bed - The runner beans are coming to an end now - we have more than we know what to do with! The 5 sweetcorn plants look nice but it is way too late for them to produce. Everything will be coming out next weekend, and  green manure going in.  This’ll keep the ground used through winter and i’ll dig it in in March ish time. I’ve chosen winter field bean as it doesn’t grow too tall

Cucurbits bed - About 6 courgettes, nothing much else. Next year we are going to plant a lot less plants in here to give them more space.

It really has been a learning curve this year, i’m looking forward to watching all the winter veg grow and clearing the mess to the compost bin, so that we can give the garden a bit of a rest.

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!