A pleasure or a chore?

Since the sweetcorn has gone in nearly two weeks ago, we have had little to no rain in this part of the UK, less than a quarter for the average for this time of year I've just heard the weather girl on the TV say and having learnt my lesson last year when I missed a few evening watering sessions and lost my brusselsprouts, I have been at the plot every evening to water everything. I must admit it has been anything but a chore, it's quite peaceful on the plot and even after working a 12 hour shift, it does clear your head a little. So far, this is what's growing on the plot.

Onion bed Number 1

Onion bed Number 2

Onion bed Number 3

All of the onion beds are doing quite well at the moment. Apart from watering and weeding, they seem to happily doing what they do best, grow and get bigger.

The first early potato bags are all topped up and I'm hoping for my best potato crop ever. The main crop still has a long way to go before getting to this stage.

Do you remember the sandwich tub with the parsnip seeds in them? Above is the bed that they are in and bellow is one of the little seedlings coming through. Will it be monster parsnips this year?

Now the rhubarb look a bit worse for wear at the moment. I had a bonfire going last week and it was a little too close to the rhubarb. The actual storks are OK, it's just that the leave make it look like some sort of blight has infected it.

Not only have I been turning up every evening, I have also done my best to come on my days off. All the old raspberries have gone now, they were all well past there best and growing wild. As luck would have it, the people on the plot next door, seeing how I've been getting on, have given me some spare raspberry plants to replace the old ones. I'm hoping to get them in on Sunday. Till next time and thanks for reading.

Garden Connect hits the ground running.

It wasn't the best looking morning to do a bit of gardening, but I knew it would be dry. I wanted to make a start on my Garden Connect bed. It wasn't the best start either, I must say. I had only put the spade in for the third time, when I heard it cracking. I did inherit the spade with the plot. I'll have to put my hand in my pocket and buy another one. At least I don't have to buy a dibber.

As they say, its not how you start but how you finish, and the day finished well. Eight out of twelve from the list are in at the moment, well, I've made a start with at any rate.

Firstly, the carrots. I have been told by many people that carrots need fine soil and do very well in containers such as a bin or an old bath with a mix of 50% compost and 50% sand. With the restrictions of GC, I have these tubs that you would find in supermarkets with cut flowers in. The bottoms have been cut off and I've mixed compost and soil sifted through a homemade sieve that I put together using spare bits of wood and the mesh from a disposable BBQ. The only reason I didn't go for the suggested mix was that I really wanted to get started and I knew if went out to get the sand, that's all I would do. But if it works with this mix, I will be doing it in my main root bed this year, tubs and all. So the carrots are in, autumn king and cosmic purple.

Next is the tomatoes, plum tomatoes in fact. I'm using the bottle you see in the photo to keep it safe from the frost. 

Here is my basil, I've done a bit of 'showing off' with green and red basil, but it's only because I had the seeds and thought it would look good. Time will only tell. These have been cloched also.

The celery and spinach have also gone in. Seeds direct to the soil. The spinach worked this way last year, but I don't know if the celery will. I'm not too worried if it doesn't, I have plenty of seeds to keep trying again and in different ways, besides, I can't stand celery. I won't be crying myself to sleep if it doesn't grow.

In the 'Your Choice' space, I've chosen spring onions. Again these are also direct to the soil. These I'd like to have growing and plenty of them please.

Lastly for GC, I've put in one of my pimientos de Padrón plants. Is it a chilli or is it a pepper? Either way, I had plenty to spare and my sweet peppers aren't quite ready yet. No photo of this one, I forgot. It is under cover as well though.

If you've read this and wondered what the hell Garden Connect is, you can click on the GC banner at the top of the page, which take you to Hiemstra Gardens website with all the information you'll need. Till next time and thanks for reading.

Pumpkin soup.

I've had my last pumpkin sat under the kitchen counter since October. I have googled recipes, but clearly never got round to checking if I had all the ingredients or buying the ingredients I needed. That is until a few days ago. To be honest, I got fed up of moving it to get to the onions, then moving back to get at the crips. The recipe I found came from the BBC food website, its a plane and very simple recipe. This is what you'll need

• 1kg pumpkin (peeled, deseeded & chopped into chunks)
• 2 onions
• Olive oil
• 700ml vegetable stock
• 140ml double cream

1. Gently cook the onions in the oil until soft.
2. Add the pumpkin and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until softened and golden.
3. Pour in the vegetable stock, season with salt and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Pour in the double cream and bring to the boil.
5. Blitz with a hand blender and serve.

If you've read one of my recipe blogposts before, you'll know that I treat the recipe as a guideline. Having bought the smallest tub of double cream, it was still nearly twice as much as I needed and I'm not keen on having cream on anything else, so it all went in. I did also put more pepper than I normally would and because I had enough for a few servings, last night I added some smoked ham and it was delicious. So if you still have a pumpkin getting in the way, give this a go. Till next time and thanks for reading.

We're gathering momentum.

Spring is really starting to kick in and if I'm not careful, I'm going to be too late with some of the things I'd like to grow. But now I'm starting to make some room on the windowsills, I should soon be up to date. Last weekend wasn't the best weather to be on the plot, it wasn't cold or raining at the time, but it was very windy, which made it very difficult to fill the potato bags you see in the above photo. This is my main crop of maris piper. Yes, I know, I have four bags with beans on them. I did go back to the garden nursery to buy more potato bags, but they had sold out. All they had were the bean bags. The purple bag in the middle is an actual potato sack I found next to my car one day. Below you can see some of my first earlies. I really am hoping for some good potatoes this year, not big, I'd just like to know that when I'm eating them that I'm the first and only living thing that's had a nibble at that spud.

I was surprised this weekend as to how quickly the sweet corn had grown. From packet to windowsill to plot within a week. Knowing that they don't like their roots being disturbed, this year I've used empty loo rolls. They have now been on the plot for a few days,  I've checked on them every evening and they are doing very well inside their coke bottle cloches. I have had the weather on my side since the weekend, warm sunshine, well for April at any rate. I still wonder if I have planted them out too early.

I'm attempting to repeat last year's success with the parsnips. What I'd done last year, and repeating this year, is to get a sandwich tub and place two sheets of wet kitchen paper on the inside of the lid, sprinkle a new packet of parsnip seeds onto the the wet kitchen paper and place the base on top. I left them on the windowsill and after two weeks, once they had started to sprout, they where ready to plant out. Using a dibber, I made cone shaped hollows in the soil, filled them with compost and place two sprouted seeds each. Fingers crossed it will work again. Till next time and thanks for reading.

Not the best picture and that's not a real dibber,
but you get the idea.

It's the Bank Holiday.

Day One

Whenever a Bank Holiday is approaching, you can be sure the rain isn't far behind. But this was a Bank Holiday that the rain forgot. I just wish I got up earlier, a lot earlier. But if you can't sleep in on a day off, when can you?

Judging by the amount of 'Simon Mayo's Confession's' podcasts I'd listened to, I spent nearly four hours on the plot today. Nothing really exciting to talk about, I've dug over empty beds and the robin that patrols my plot gladly came along, at a safe distance, and pecked at the bugs. I did, however, top up the potato bags. It's a whole lot easier to throw some compost into Spud bags than it is to earth up potatoes in the beds, its done in a fraction of the time too. The onions have started to pop up as well. They're about the only thing I've ever managed grow consistently, well, not the over winter onions.

I'm all for experimenting and trying thing out when it comes to growing. I'd bought these tomatoes from Asda, some of the best supermarket tomatoes I've ever had. They're called Tomkin's. After some advice from Sally (see Pimientos de Padrón blogpost) on what to do, clean all the gunk off the seeds and let them dry, I put the seeds in a propagater on my windowsill. This is what I have at the moment. I don't mind admitting that I'm quite pleased so far. 

My windowsills are looking very full at the moment. I'm running out of space and I've run out of propagators to grow any more. If I put anymore on the windowsills, I'd get no daylight. I am in desperate need of a greenhouse. This is my view right now.

From left to right & top to bottom, Basil seeds in the
pot & parsnip seeds in the Tupperware starting
to sprout. Sweet corn in the top 2 propagators &
various peppers & okra in the bottom one.

Pimientos de Padrón

The whole bottom row are lemon
cucumber.
Top left, Tomkin's tom & next to them
Pimientos de Padrón.
Top right is a mixture of what I couldn't
fit anywhere else.

Day Two

Before

I know I've been trying to get this area ready for six 'No Dig Beds', but while it was clear...ish, I wanted to tackle what will be the raspberry row and an area that I have ear marked for a greenhouse. I was really up for it today. I pulled up the existing raspberries which I'm told have been there well over 10 years and well past their best. Not only that, hawthorn, brambles and some plum trees that have no place being there at all. At one point, I was pulling up the small trees by hand, GRRR! Slowly but surely, I am claiming back my plot. Give me another five years and I might just have the plot how I'd like it. Here's how this area was left.

After

I know this has been one of the longest blogposts I written and I hope that you at least had a cup o tea in hand while reading. Till next time and thanks for reading.

One of the trees I'd ripped up from the
earth. This is as macho as I get.

Pimientos de Padrón, the race is on.

As you may have read in previous blogpost, my mother had sent me six packets of Padrón pepper seeds, myself and few friends are all growing them. It's been called a competition, but how we are going to judge who wins or looses is anyone's guess. It has been mentioned, mainly by myself, of us all getting together and having a Harvest Fiesta with our pimientos. That is more up my street. Today's blogpost is just about how we are all getting on.

Sally

Firstly we have Sally, she was the first to start her seeds off. To say she's a bit competitive is like saying Einstein's a bit clever. Trouble is, she can back it up. As the saying goes "What she doesn't know, ain't worth knowing". So she has started her seeds off in a heated greenhouse with the temperature staying between 15°C and 20°C. These are her seedlings from about two weeks ago. They have now been potted on.

Phill

Next is Phill, aka Suffikboi, who started about a month after Sally. He's been very scientific about it all. As you can see, he's used seed trays with one seed in each using multipurpose compost that was left in the kitchen near a window (sunny and south facing) 24 hours before planting to keep warm. Once planted, the compost was kept moist with warmed water so that the temperature of the compost wouldn't drop. Half had a heat mat under at 24°C, 90% germination after a week. The other half hadn't germinated after two weeks with the kitchen temperature at about 20°C. Now that's dedication.

Michelle

Michelle has had a bit of misfortune, she has her seedlings growing on the kitchen windowsill, doing quite well as it goes, until one of her cats decide it's a good spot for a snooze resulting killing all but two seedlings. These now are well out of reach from the cat, with foil under the pot to help increase fruit with less aphid damage. As for the cat, I suggested a Davey Crockett style hat.

Liam

This is Liam's first time growing any type of chilli. He has used one of his herb planters he makes. Once filled with compost and seeds sown, he had left it under the stairs for a few weeks to keep warm, while also keeping the soil moist. Like myself, he doesn't have a greenhouse, so he has them in a utility room windowsill in the sun.

Richard

Lastly, myself. Above are my first sowing. Directly into pots, soil kept moist on a windowsill. It took bloody ages to germinate, but slowly they did. Two weeks later I used a propagator, lid and all, didn't take half as long. Clearly I needed to cover the first batch in some way.

Now I did say to Sally that I have a trick up my sleeve. I don't want to let my ancestors down, the only one descended from Galicia and not able to grow pimientos de Padrón. I was given six seeds packets, so I've sneakily added another competitor. Let's call him Mr. Newman. He's a friend from work and by his own admission , he kills everything he tries to grow. Before he knew what had happened, he was holding the last seed packet. I'm not going to loose this one. But the joke's on me. On his shift there is a man know as the Genius, knows everything about everything, he has an allotment as well. Mr. Newman has only gone and given him the seeds to grow on his behalf. Oh well! As yet I don't have a report yet on our last grower.

I'd like to thank everyone taking part for taking the time to send the information and photos. I'd also like to apologize for taking my time in putting it all together. Till next time and thanks for reading.

Spring is truly here.

For the last few weeks I've been asked and have done a lot of Overtime at work. I haven't done as much as has been asked, because I had to draw the line somewhere. Although the money comes in very handy, there is no point in working all the hours when Spring is the busiest time in the gardeners calendar. What the hell am I supposed to do with the potatoes and onion sets if I have no time to sow them?  Sunday was a day best spent on the plot and what with all the hustle and bustle of King Richard III's reinterment, I knew exactly where I wanted to be. Don't get me wrong, it's a big thing for Leicester and I'm glad he's been laid to rest here, but I'm not a big fan of crowds and me being so small, I wouldn't see anything anyway.

Onion bed No. 1

I was planning on spending most of the day on my own on the plot with my 'Weekend Dad' duties done, but on bringing my daughter back home, there was a change of plan. I had now inherited three helpers, my youngest daughter and my Ex's partners two children. They were the best helper's I've had in a long time. They dug a bed and prepared the soil ready for sowing the onion sets. We had a few onions left over, so they dug another bed and sowed some more. 

Onion bed No. 2

And yet we still had onions left, so the flower bed that I had been preparing for my daughter now has onions. I didnt intend to buy so many onions, it's just what came in the £1.50 bag. The bed's not quite finished, but for the moment, it'll be OK. My daughter assure me she doesn't mind me using it, she'll just put flowers around the onions.

Onion bed No. 3

The children's day was made when the pheasant that patrols the site passed by. Try as they might there was no photographic evidence, nothing very clear at any rate. They would've had a better chance of photographing Nessie. 

The only thing left to do was to was to water everything in, including the row of potatoes I had put in the week before. When we got back, they each got £2 for their hard work. I have since been told that a bag of sweets is the going rate for kids helping out on the allotment. Till next time and thanks for reading.