Showing posts with label broccoli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label broccoli. Show all posts

Sunday, February 10, 2013

A beginning and an end

Potato chitting time has arrived again! My Apache potatoes arrived in the post yesterday, so I got them straight into egg boxes and into the cool spare room. These are a maincrop potato variety with attractive red markings. We've been buying them from our local supermarket for mini roasties, so thought I might as well try growing my own. I grew Ulster Classic last year and while they were lovely in taste, they were a bit too floury for my preference - fine if you want mash all the time, but pretty useless for anything else.



This weekend I also need to redo my planting plans for the year. Maybe it was the cold weather and snow cover, but our garden in December and January was suddenly inundated by some very hungry pigeons. There have always been pigeons in the large trees surrounding the suburban veg plot and there have always been winter brassicas in the plot, but this was my first experience of the 2 meeting... And suffice to say, the brassicas came off worse.
The tuscan kale, the early sprouting broccoli, the cauliflowers bought as plug plants, the savoy cabbages - all of it, gone. This is probably gardener's karma for forgetting about them as seedlings in the autumn (see post here). I managed to net the brussels sprouts before Christmas, so saved some of those but the rest was wholly decimated. Were it not for the fact I am vegetarian, there may have been some pigeon pie served up for dinner!


Friday, November 23, 2012

Out of sight, out of mind

Oooops! I just found these in a neglected corner of my garden. Brassica plantlets (savoy cabbage, tuscan kale and early sprouting broccoli) that I moved out of the cold frame in early October and subsequently forgot they even existed. Naughty careless suburban veg gardener!


I've found homes for most of them dotted around the raised beds. Hopefully they'll forgive my neglect and still give me something of a harvest come 2013?


Monday, May 11, 2009

Now we're motoring...


A busy Sunday was had in the suburban veg plot. More spring cabbage was harvested - I think they're starting to go to seed so we may be eating cabbage rather a lot over the next few weeks. A few more radishes were uprooted and new seed sown in their place.
Excitement abound as the purple podded peas (Lancashire Lad) are seen to have shot up to 6 foot and are now in flower - in beautiful colours! So hopefully the cabbage dinners will shortly be making way for purple mange tout.
I've been hardening off plants over the last few weeks so took the plunge and planted out 2 summer purple sprouting broccoli, a Floridor courgette and an outdoor melon. With a few pieces of strategically placed fleece and one or two plastic bottle cloches in place everything should be fine if the overnight temps suddenly drop again. I've still got Defender courgettes, butternut squash and pumpkin in the greenhouse in large pots, so they'll make the transition to outdoors over the next week or so. At that stage I'll actually be able to move around in my little greenhouse and reach the tomato plants rather than flinging water in their general direction.
The flowering broad beans (Aquadulce) are now waving little baby pods around and the spring-sown broadies (Express) are already showing their first leaves in the same plot as the peas.
I have learned a new way of dealing with slugs - my preferred method thus far has been to scoop them up on a trowel and then catapult them at speed towards the laurel hedge at the bottom of the garden. Although it gave me great satisfaction to hear the little muffled thud as they hit the tree trunks, it was pointed out to me that given that they're made mainly of muscle, they were probably getting off with a bit of a headache before heading back towards my raised beds for another snack. So, with the aid of an upturned flower bucket, I'm now laying them out as fast as I find them as a snack for our friendly garden blackbird - who seems very pleased with the general arrangement.

Potato update 2009: The first bags of Mimi and Anya are almost filled up with soil with plenty of potato foliage (haulms, so I'm told) on top. Looking forward to the harvest in a couple of weeks!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

February flurries?


A couple of hours of work in the garden saw the last raised bed filled with top soil and rotted manure. We added 3 new beds in December to double our growing area from last year. The bean trench has been dug (after finally deciding to grow the runner beans up an existing sturdy trellis rather than battle to put up temporary cane supports again) and is now part-filled with kitchen waste.
So, everything is ready for plants to go in the ground now - but obviously that still won't be for a couple of months yet. 1st May is the projected last frost date so I'll have to bide my time until then. The seedlings are keeping me occupied in the interim - the photo here is of a summer purple sprouting broccoli seedling about 2 weeks old. They're currently living happily on my windowsill.
The scotch bonnet chillis are showing tiny tiny little signs of germination and I've sown some yellow pear tomato - they look so cute on the seed packet picture!
So now it's time to sit back and wait for the forecast Russian snow blizzards to arrive. It's certainly cold out there and there are a few snowflakes floating around, but no real sign yet of a full-on snowfall.