April comes to an end

Last report for April. What's happened this month ? Well, a lot of repair work to the raised beds. They are now 7 years old and some of them are beginning to rot away. I have patched most of them, but next year I think we'll have to re-make many of them. Moral of this story: wood and soil do not go well together. No matter how much preservative you put on, the woodlice will chew at the wood and eat it. There's one more bed to repair which I will do next week.

Trish has now put her peas, runner beans and sweet peas in. There's some Little Gem lettuce too. All the earlier plantings are looking good - and the cauliflowers and savoy cabbages (always a bit twitchy) are looking very healthy. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed for the club root to stay away.

I put two more rows of spuds in - that's all the spuds planted for 2009. The first earlies, which I put in about 6 weeks ago are now beginning to show.

We have a big new "civil engineering" project nearly completed. I have got so peed off with the pigeons (and other birds) eating everything that's not under netting that I decided to make a walk-in cage. It's nearly finished -- just got to put the net over, which we'll do early May, then it will be ready for cauliflowers, cabbage, broccoli, sprouts, courgettes and black kale which will be coming from the nursery in about a weeks time. Pictures when it's all done. We dug up a big patch of flowers to make room for the cage. In these credit crunch times, things you can eat are more important than things you can look at.

I'm also taking up some of the black material Trish laid down a couple of years ago to supress the weeds on the paths and replacing it with paving slabs. Our next door neighbours (at home) had a pile ( 44 to be exact) of slabs they did not want, so I have ferried them down to the allotty and have started to lay them. Keeps the weeds down a reat and good to walk on. Pictures when it's all finished.

At home I have sweet corn ready to plant out - probably do that next week. The squash have just germinated in the propagator, but the dwarf french beans seem very reticent - no show yet after two weeks. I'll give 'em another week then if nothing has happened, it will be plan B - throw them away and get some from the nursery.

I also have a lot of sunflowers which have just germinated. We usually scatter a few around, but last year we didn't get round to it. So a special effor this year ! They will be planted out in about two weeks time.

We should be through this big bulge of effort in a week or so, then we can relax a bit - there'll be "just" the routine weeding and tidying up to do

April update (what happened to March ??)

I haven't yet quite managed to do a post every week as I promised I would . Mind you - not a lot has been happening that you can look at since February. But here we are at the beginning of April and there's been quite a few changes.

For the first time I'm trying to grow strawberries. These were put in last Autumn and they are looking pretty good so far. There are two dozen more like this, so soon it should be big juicy berries to look at. The straw is supposed to dissuade the slugs, protect from frost and prevent the berries touching the ground.

Another newcomer for 2009 is shallotts. Don't know why we haven't grown these in the past. These are called "Pikant" and were put in at the beginning of March. At the same time I also put in some red onions, white onions and some garlic. They're also coming along great. We were a little late last year with our onions and the weather was freaky, so we didn't do too well. So fingers crossed for onions, shallots and garlic !

These little fellas are 10 day old turnips. I grew them, accidentally, for the first time last year. They were supposed to be carrots, but I got the seed mixed up and ended up with turnips. But they were delicious. We picked them when they were still quite small - after about 8 weeks growth - and were pleasantly suprised by the taste. So lets hope I can repeat the accidental success from 2008 ! There's also parsnips, carrotts, and radish and I'll be putting some swedes in, in about 4 weeks time.

Another of my favourites is broad beans. Theses were put in at the beginning of March and are looking good so far - though as you can see something has already started to nibble the leaves ! Last year the broad beans were doing really well until about 3 weeks before picking, then they all got some horrible big brown spots on the leaves and expired. Other folks on the allotty had the same problem. I notice that this year some folks have protected their broad beans by putting them inside of tent made from "Agrilan" which is a very fine mesh net. I have done the same with some of mine so we'll see what difference it makes.

We've also got cauliflowers, savoy cabbage, broad beans, beetroot and peas. They are all under Agrilan netting at the moment and a bit hard to see until they get a bigger, so no indivual photos yet. I've also got two long rows of early potatoes, but they are not showing yet. This general view is from the shed. Front right are the cauliflowers, under the fine mesh net. Next to them are onions and on the far left are the radishes, parsnips and some more turnips. The next bed, running the width of the picture is empty at the moment, but will soon have dwarf french beans. Beyond that onions and empty beds awaiting courgettes. The little rectangular frame is the carrot box and beyond that broad beans and cabbages.