Wellrooted - Gardening and vegetable growing diaries from the West Country - Part 4

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Last Weekend

Apr 19th 2010

By: reluctantgardener

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Saturday 17^th April 2010

The grand weather over the past few days meant that it was time to pick up my tools and do something about the mess that we call a back garden.

Spoke to She who must be obeyed and got detailed instructions and the plan of action for the day ahead.

The easy job came first, clear all the large stones from the bottom left flower bed and turn the soil. So after a bit of effort I managed to turn it from this…..

The bottom left flower bed

…into this.

Bottom Left Flower Bed

All that is needed now is a bit of peat/manure to fork into the soil and then plant a few bedding plants.

After the easy job came a bit more work of the hard kind. The bottom centre flower bed is the largest bed that we have and had a medium sized fir tree, a creeping fir and a black spider plant in it. There is also a stump that is all that remains of another smaller fir tree that was taken down late last year.

First to go was the creeping fir. Cut all the green stuff off with a pair of secateurs and then dug up the remaining stump and roots. After that the black spider plant was easily taken up and placed in the recycle bin (more about the black spider later).

I then tried to dig up the old stump that remained from the fir tree destruction of last year but after much grunting and heaving (and a few choice words not repeatable on here in case some young gardener of the year is reading) I gave it up as a bad joke. It’s still there taunting me, but I have a plan to have the last laugh at it.

Anyway, the flower bed is looking a lot tidier now that most of the green stuff has been dug up.

We have gone from this…

The bottom centre flower bed

…to this

Bottom Middle Flower Bed

So a good few hours spent in the sunshine and the back garden was already looking a lot tidier. So not wanting to get too involved in it I cleaned up all the tools and packed them away and beat a hasty retreat to the lounge.

Sunday 18th April 2010

Another glorious day dawned over Plymouth so after treating the Manager of the house to breakfast in bed (again) I received more detailed instructions on the way ahead.

This time the bottom right flower bed was the centre of attention and then it was onto cutting the lawn, front and back, for the first time this year.

Obviously the selective hearing that I sometimes find most useful kicked in at the wrong time and I mis-heard some of the instructions that was given and I started to dig up the dwarf fir tree in the flower bed. This brought forth she who must be obeyed who informed me that it was to stay where it was and I just had to get rid of the fir tree and the creeping fir.

I hadn’t gotten far with digging up the dwarf tree so replaced the soil that I had disturbed and started to carry on with getting rid of the fir tree and creeping fir. At this stage also she who must be obeyed noticed that I had dug of the black spider plant yesterday.

After a brief “discussion” I rescued the plant from the recycle bin. Thankfully it was near the top and I didn’t have to go searching too far down the waste to find it. The rescued plant was then potted into one of the many flower pots we have and given a drink of water and now sits happily at the bottom of the garden by the bird feeding station.

Back to the flower bed and again with the trusty secateurs and a shovel I made quick work of the remaining tree and plant that need to be dug up and the flower bed went from this..

The bottom right flower bed

to this…

Bottom Right Flower Bed

That was the all the hard work out of the way. Next up was the lawn, front and back. So out with the lawn mower and in no time at all the first cut of the year was complete.

The Back Garden

All in all about 5 hours of work and the garden is looking a lot more tidier than is was a few weeks ago as can be seen from the image above.

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Prolific Planting

Apr 18th 2010

By: Paul

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Yet another fantastic weekend of spring sunshine, gardeners are being spoilt! I finally got round to putting the potatos into the raised bed this weekend – 16 plants went in. I also completed planting our ‘staple’ veg and the raised bed is now full for the time being. Here is what I planted:
- 8 x onion sets ‘sturon’
- 2 x rows of lettuce ‘salad bowl’
- 2 x rows of lettuce ‘little gem’
- 2 x rows carrot ‘chantenay red cored 2′
- 3 x rows raddish ‘french breakfast 3′
I had also been given some nice new plants from Doug which has helped my variety a bit. I now have a squash ‘F1 sunbeam’ and 2 courgettes – ‘midnight’ and ‘green bush’.

The hydroponics experiment is still running well, with everything growing at a good pace at the moment.

The strawberry plants have been sensational so far, soaking up all of this spring sunshine.

The runner and dwarf beans have just started to sprout.

The tomato plants that are due to go into grow bags in the greenhouse are just about ready for planting.

Spring onion progress is going well.

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Pauls Garden
Fantastic weekend

Apr 12th 2010

By: Doug

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Finally spring is here. It’s official.

What a wonderful weekend in the garden, just what we needed to recover from a slow start to spring. This weekend I got down to some serious sowing, Second round of Runners, Broad bean and Tomato were sown. Onions from seed were planted out. Potted garlic was finally planted in the Big bed.

The greenhouse although still not completely finished is coming into it’s own! – I love having a greenhouse!

I built myself a new container for the greenhouse. Its bigger than it looks at nearly 4ft long and should be a fantastic place to grow the peppers. This year i am growing “Big red” and “California wonder” I am wondering what else I should grow in there.. Any ideas?

Some of the late march sowing have started to come though this past week. I am using last years peas and germination has been quite slow. Hopefully this hot weather will speed things along.

The greenhouse bench I made last weekend is nearly full! Time to put in some more shelves. All sorts of seedlings in progress. Squash and courgettes are looking good as are the chili peppers.

Hopefully the weather will continue though the week. There is always so much to do in the garden.

The chickens are enjoying their new run. They can now come outside even when we are not home.

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Dougs Garden, The Chickens
Spring Heat!

Apr 11th 2010

By: Paul

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What weekend weather! The temperature inside the greenhouse was topping 30c and some of the young plants were wilting quite a lot.

I was mostly repotting things this weekend, moving young plants from their propogators into bigger pots. They have also moved on from the greenhouse into the cold frames to free up some room.

The raised bed frame has been improved, so the netting is easier to remove to work on. The netting is stapled to a long section of wood that can be lifted up over the top bar so that it takes it all out of the way.

The hydroponics kit is now is full flow, so happy with the progress on that so far. I started by measuring out how many litres of water were going to fill the resevoir. I needed this to know how much nutrient solution to add. It turned out that it took 15 litres and I added 7ml per litre. I also had to alter the PH level of the water, to begin with from the tap it was around 7.2 so I used phosphoric acid to bring it down to about 5.5, this is also what the nutrient solution required. I also made a new wooden cover and pre-cut 6 holes to place the rock wool cubes in. I then laid the spreader matt down on the tray, placed the wooden cover on top and planted into the cubes.

I have planted 2 x ‘Gardener’s Delight’ tomato, 2 x ‘California Wonder’ pepper, 1 x Basil and 1 x Corriander herbs.

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Pauls Garden
Signs of life!

Apr 7th 2010

By: Paul

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The recent planting of the strawberries has already proven successful, as we have some flowers already – at the beginning of April!

The power socket is now installed in the greenhouse ready for the hydroponics. I’m going to get this up and running at the weekend.

I recently gave the pepper plant that managed to survive the winter some tomato feed. I’m hoping that this will spur on some new growth in the greenhouse. I also need to remove the baby pepper growing to encourage more leaf growth first.

The young tomato plants are proving to excellent so far. These are all ‘Gardener’s Delight’ variety. They have been moved from their propogator to small individual pots.

These young ‘California Wonder’ pepper plants have now sprouted and appear to be healthy. They will also need potting on soon.

The single clove of garlic seemed to die a couple of weeks ago but have now sprung back into life since moving from my flat into the greenhouse.

I finally managed to get round to planting on the ‘Kelsae’ and ‘Alisa Craig’ onions that had started from seed. They are now sitting securely on the left hand side of the raised bed.

Pauls Garden
Progress in the garden

Apr 7th 2010

By: Doug

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With the rubbish weather forecast I was not expecting to be able to get outside quite as much as I did this weekend. I ended up making quite alot of progress.

I have nearly finished the greenhouse. All the glass is in and all the broken panels have been replaced with 4mm corrugated polycarbonate. I didn’t have very high expectations for polycarbonate but first impressions are good. It was easy to work with and seems to be stiff enough to hold up to the elements. One thing i will be doing is adding a few extra clips in here and there as this seemed to keep everything a bit more solid.

I built the workbench out of some wood i had in the shed, One end is slatted and on the other I made a solid edged platform for sowing seeds on. The edges should stop the soil from falling down the back. I am planning on putting boards along the lower supports to make a second shelf. This was a really simple DIY project and providing you use a tape measure you can’t really go wrong! The timber for the bench cost about £20 but i did have to make use of a few off cuts i had in the shed.

If you don’t fancy making one you can buy them pretty cheaply. Garden centre online do a couple of aluminium potting bench’s that are a reasonable price.

potting bench – Garden Centre Online

If like me you working on a wooden bench, this one looks nice.

Deluxe Wooden Potting Table | Outdoor Accessories

For now I have wired in the existing electricity supply, this was conveniently in place from the shed that used to be on the site. It is simply a fused spur to with the house sockets and lighting switches on the end. I will be replacing these ASAP.

I finally planted out the few broad bean plants that were sown in February. Up til now they have been getting hot and bothered in the conservatory. I hope they survive the shock of being put outside! Broad beans are hardy little buggers so they should be OK. I also planted out some runner beans that were planted in trays on March the 20th.

I also planted out my Kelsae and Alisa Craig onions that were sown in Feb. They were not looking as big as i had hoped so rather then plant them far apart and give them space to grow big, I have packed them in with about 1″ between plants. I will gradually thin them throughout the season. This way i will get a nice supply of spring onions, followed by some shallot sized onions followed by a few big ones! – That’s the plan anyway. I am pinning my hopes for growing some monster sized onions on the onion plants purchased from Fothergils. They should arrive soon and I am planning on preparing a bed for them in the new greenhouse.

Also put a fence around the main veg patch, hopefully this will help keep the cats and the chickens off.

On Saturday Hayley sowed Parsnips, Carrots, Golden Burpee Beetroot, and Crimson Globe beetroot in the raised bed. The glass was put on top to keep the cats off until I build a fence.

Nice to see some better weather!

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Dougs Garden
Spring snow and hail

Apr 1st 2010

By: Doug

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Well looks like i was wrong last week about Spring arriving! Snow, black ice and hail on April the 1st! And I am not joking…

Here is the garden in the snow. Was a bit worried that the new greenhouse that is only half glazed was going to crumble in the gale force winds, but it seems solid so far!

Can hardly believe this is Spring. Daffodils don’t seem to mind…

The Garlic know it’s spring, about time i put these in the ground I think…

The garlic planted in the flower borders in February is really starting to grow now. Usually they would be much bigger by now! Hopefully they will catch up.

Onion sets are sprouting, about 2″ tall now. “Centurion” are leading the way. Hopefully they didn’t sustain too much damage in the hail storm.

I sowed a few more seeds this week in modular trays. In went Early butternut’s, Crimson Globe Beetroot, Golden nugget Beetroot, Courgettes and Giant pumpkin.

Really want a nice dry day to finish the greenhouse, the conservatory is filling up fast. Those beans are more that ready to be planted out but in this weather they will have to wait!

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Dougs Garden
Out with Shed in with Greenhouse

Mar 29th 2010

By: Doug

2 comments

After seeing how good Pauls new greenhouse was looking, I thought i should make some progress with my own

About two weeks ago I bought a second hand greenhouse from an old lady who was unable to use it anymore. A very good quality glass greenhouse about 12ft x 6ft. This is as big as my garden could handle. It took paul and i about 5 hours to dismantle and label up.

Last weekend I removed the old shed and cleared room for the greenhouse. This weekend I started building. I used 10cm x 10cm tanelised wood for the base that sits on the concrete shed foundations. This seems to be pretty solid so, so far so good.

The greenhouse stored in the shed

The old shed

Progress so far!

Dougs Garden
Strawberrys and Shelves

Mar 27th 2010

By: Paul

1 comment

This latest weekend was a good one in terms of progress towards the full growing season. The greenhouse is now fully installed and useable and we now have a fantastic solid workbench / shelf (thanks to my Dad for building it!). I have moved a lot of my seed propagators to the greenhouse now as well as a ‘Demon red’ chilli bush that has survived the winter indoors. It produced a fantastic yield last season and I’m hoping for more of the same.

My spring onions have all now sprouted and I have moved them from indoors to one of my cold frames which are now ontop the garage roof.

We also now have a long row of 12 strawberry plants placed in our newly created bed opposide our raised bed. I’m hoping these will be really successful.

I am also hoping to try out my hydroponics kit that has been sitting in my loft for the past year. It’s something I dabbled in last year but never really got going. We will be running power into the greenhouse soon and then I will be able to give it a go. I use a technique called NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) which is where a pump moves water laced with a plant nutrient solution from a resevoir below over a film in which the plant roots have grown. It is used a lot in giant commercial growing and something that has interested me for a while. More updates on that when I get it up and running.

Pauls Garden
The windowsill it is

Mar 25th 2010

By: Doug

3 comments

With the garden inaccessible due to the bad weather i have decided to turn my attentions to the office windowsill!

We have a few plants on the go here, firstly the now three year old chilli plant. (unsure of variety). It’s already growing it’s first chillies of the year. Grows big medium strength fruit. We keep it heavily pruned so it doesn’t outgrow the windowsill!

Paul and I also like to grow avocados from seed, this is one that was raised from seed last year. looking pretty good. Apparently it takes 15 years before they will grow fruit. Our oldest plant is about 3 years old and about 8ft tall! If anyone is interested i will post a guide. Good one for the kids or fully grown adults like us…

A few chili plants growing from seed. They are doing really well here in the heated office. only planted about two weeks ago.

The first of my gourds! This is the only gourd that has grown so far. Its a Birdhouse Gourd, if it grows as It should it will produce some amazing looking fruit that can be dried out and carved out to make a birdhouse.

Dougs Garden
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