Our Vegetable Patch

The only thing I was going to try a little differently this year was to cover one of my raised beds with a black permeable membrane. The main idea being that it will help suppress weeds. So less work for me hopefully. It should have the added benefit of reducing evaporation and help keep the soil moist.

I suspect however, that the membrane will provide a great retreat for slugs. They’ll use it to hide from birds and the midday sun following their night time raids on my vegetables. The thought of them, gorged and satisfied under their blanket, as I survey my machine gunned cabbages is upsetting me already.

I’ve been busy putting some seeds down again this year. Nothing too exiting at the moment. I’m hoping that it’ll be ok to use some of the seed that I have left over from last year as well as a couple of new verities I’ve bought online. We’ll soon find out I guess. Unfortunately I never organized a proper diary to record what I did last spring. I did scribble notes on various pieces of paper but never really gathered them all together. So one of the new toys I bought over the winter was a proper label printer. I bought the Brother GL-200 Garden Label Printer, £24.95, which can automatically print the date on each label. I’m very pleased with it. Every time I do something in the garden I make one label for the marker in the ground and stick a second label on a plank which I’ve screwed to the greenhouse door. The plan being that the plank will give me a diary that I can ponder over next year.

I’ve also invested in an automatic watering system. The tomatoes grown in the greenhouse were a big success last summer. Popular with our children and the B&B guests. So I’ve added a second bed to the greenhouse so we can grow some more along side the peppers and aubergines. The automatic watering will hopefully make life a little easier during our busy summer months. One of the disappointments of last year was some of the longer root vegetables. Parsnips and carrots. I think it was a combination of starting the seedlings in guttering and the fact that there are just too many stones in the soil in our raised beds. In hindsight I should have put better or sieved soil in the beds, but it seems like to much effort to do much about it now. I’m intending however to start the seedling off in some old toilet roll tubes filled with compost. I’ll transplant them, tube an all, into the ground when ready. Again, we’ll wait and see if this helps.

I’m also trying to be more realistic about what we as a family will actually end up eating. The artichokes that I grew last year ended up being left in the fridge. We didn’t really know what to do with them. The beetroot was another crop that grew well but wasn’t so popular on the dinner table. I know we should work on new recopies etc, but concentrating on veg that we know how to cook makes sense for now.

My carrots and parsnips have grown all squify. I’m pretty sure this is because of the way I propagated them in the greenhouse. I started the carrots, if you remember, by sowing them into lengths of guttering full of compost. Waiting for them to grow and then, when the time was right, simply sliding the entire crop out of the half pipe and into a shallow trench in the raised bed. I noticed then that the roots of these young carrots were surprisingly long and had probably already reached the bottom of the guttering. These young roots were then naturally forced sideways. I sort of assumed that this would sort itself out one I put them in the ground. But I’m not so sure now.

The problem may have been made worse by the fact that I had also created a shallow trench of nice soft compost sitting above what was much harder and very stony ground.
I should mention that the guttering system worked well for other crops, especially pick and come again salads. The system also worked for my brasicas like cabbage and broccoli. But now that I’ve also learnt to space these out much more and to sow less seeds the advantage of being able to quickly slide out lots of densely packed seedlings is negated.

But for me at least using guttering it’s a definite no no for root vegetables. I’m still keen to start things off in the greenhouse however, so I guess I’ll just have to use root trainers and transplant each seedling individually.

I’ve taken some more pictures of the vegetable garden so as to compare them with the ones I took back in June.

I thought it might be fun to keep a record of the development of two pumpkin plants grown by Lowri and Seren. We chose ‘Jack of all Trades’. No idea why, except the packet said they were ‘perfect for Halloween carvings’ which is something else we can look forward to. I’ll try and write a post every now and again detailing their progress. Soon the 7th of June two seeds were placed in 11cm pots filled with standard compost. Then covered with half a lemonade bottle which is an idea I saw on the telly and placed on the kitchen windowsill.

There now outside being ‘hardened off’, still with their lemonade bottle covers. I’ll plant them out properly next week some time.

I promised to post some more pictures of the vegetable plot. So here they are.

We had some unusual weather conditions last week. There was a a realy strong wind blowing in from the North-East. It played havock with my vetgetable beds unfortunetly. My newly constructed hazel climbing frame was completely blown away together with most of the french beans that were just begining to cling to it. I’ve also got greenfly on my parsnips. Nowhere else, just the parsnips. So if anybody out there has some tips on how to get rid of them I’d love to hear from you. Organic methods only naturally.

The rest of the vegetables are doing quite well. We’ve been eating a lot of the lettuce and rocket. And the tomatoes have just started producing tine little green fruit which is very exiting for a first timer like me. I’ll try and take some photo’s and post them on here in the next couple of days.

I finally pulled myself together and thinned out my seedlings. Leaving only the lucky ones which happened to be the 6″ apart dictated on the seed packet. I suspect I should have done this weeks ago. The packet clearly stipulated, ‘pick out the weaker seedlings’. But they all looked so healthy to me, surely they all deserved a chance. But with a heavy heart the deed has now been done.

I’ve also had a go at putting a small selection of the spinach, and lettuce out into the raised beds just to see how they fare.

Things haven’t gone well this week. Another stray sheep has eaten all my budding strawberries. They’re quite clinical in their munching. Not a single fruit or flower is left. A sharp frost has affected some of my seedlings, I guess I might have to think about running some power to the greenhouse for next year. And on top of all that I dropped a tray of plants when moving them yesterday. Young aubergine plants and compost all over the place. Nightmare!

The greenhouse is looking quite green at the moment. Louise was getting a little fed up of my propagator on the kitchen windowsill so I’ve now transplanted most of my seedlings into individual pots in the greenhouse. They include aubergines, chilly peppers, sweet peppers, sprouts and tomatoes. The only ones who suffered from this are the cucumbers. They drooped a bit after transplanting, but my new bible ‘The Vegetable and Heb Expert’ did warn me that might happen. I’ve also learnt to favor Thompson & Morgan for seeds. All their seeds seem to sprout without exception which also means I need to learn to sow a little more thinly in future.