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.

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…