April so far

Last weekend (4th/5th) was a busy one - two full days on the plots.
I planted out the broad beans...And transplanted the peas into the same bed. I love the way they almost instantly know where and what to curl their tendrils around.

I also planted out the yellow mange tout up against the hazel and chicken wire frame I'd put together.

And on Sunday we put in most of the potatoes - Nadine & Charlotte, with only the Pink Fir Apples to go.
I also sowed lots of flowers - poached egg plant, love-in-a-mist, cornflowers and two kinds of poppies.

Not long now...

Until we'll be reaping some of the rewards of all our hard slog over the last few months.

The first early potatoes are starting to flower and this is supposed to be a sign that they're ready. Although when I dug one up I only found 3 tubers...boo! I'll probably have to step up the watering and wait until more flowers have opened.

The peas have started to flower, can't wait for my first pod eaten, there and then! The broad bean flowers are now giving way to tiny little beans, so they'll need more watering too...sigh!

At the weekend we planted 20 replacements for the celeriac seedlings that got munched (an Ebay purchase) and 12 red cabbage plants that I couldn't resist buying at the garden centre the other day. The cabbage plants have been netted against the pigeons and butterflies and plenty of slug pellets put round all of them.

Planting out

The peas grown in the guttering were planted out at the weekend and they seem to be (so far) immune from any pigeon or slug attacks. I knew the blackcurrant and apple tree prunings would come in handy as pea sticks. Got another 40 emerging in plugs in the cold frame.

Lettuce eat salad

Well in about 6 weeks we should have a fresh supply.

I sowed the 12 leftover soaked peas, rocket, little gem, American land cress, spicy mixed leaves and 'Quattro Stagioni' mixed leaves into a long plastic 'window-box' type of container. Plan is to eat the pea shoots and start picking the salad as young leaves, eventually leaving a few to mature.

In other seed sowing news I've sown about 40 peas in the module tray, as I don't have enough guttering for another large batch. I also soaked them overnight to see if that makes them germinate quicker than the first batch.

I've decided on growing three of the normal shaped but stripey courgettes 'Striato d'Italia' and two of the round 'Tondo di Piacenza'. I might also make a second later sowing, depending on how well the summer shapes up. I sow the seeds on their sides (see photo) as its supposed to make it easier for them to germinate and stops them rotting in the soil.

Peas and Beans

Peas have finally emerged and I've put the broad beans out into the mini-greenhouse to start to acclimatise to the great outdoors.

Must sow some more of both and start thinking about sowing some french and borlotti...maybe when things warm up a wee bit more.

Little and Large

The littlest seeds - Celeriac - have emerged at about the same time as the biggest - Broad Beans - despite being planted a week or so later. I suppose the Broad Beans have a big energy store that they can burst into life as soon as they're given the right conditions.

(You can see the tomato seelings in the background). But that doesn't quite hold true for all legumes as the sweet peas and the edible peas (only just emerging now) took quite a long time to germinate.

More Sowing

Had a bit of a flurry on the sowing front, sowed peas (33 x Hurst Green Shaft) a bit later than last year, Beetroot (Boltardy), Celeriac (Alabaster) and Kohl Rabi (XXX).

I sow peas in short lengths of guttering as discovered in the brilliant blog http://www.mytinyplot.co.uk/ last year and the method seems to work quite well. It goes a little something like this:

Fill the guttering almost to the top with compost Place the peas (you can pre-soak but I didn't want to wait any longer) at a spacing of approx. 2cm apart in two staggered rows

Cover with compost (like the ones on the right) and mound it slightly

When the seedlings are big enough to plant out (and the weather warm enough) then its just a case of sliding them into a ready made shallow trench. More when that time comes...

The weather this weekend is too cold to plant out the seed potatoes, that are chitting nicely in the outhouse, and so we've been doing other 'house & flat' stuff and will wait until things warm up. Plan is to plant them on the 5/6th April.

I also transplanted (finally!!) the basil seedlings that have been waiting patiently on the kitchen window sill. They were quite leggy so I've put them in deeper so that they thicken up and develop a better rootball.