Friday 7 March 2008

Happy Birthday Us!

This blog is one year old today! Which means our allotment is one year old today too!!

It's too cold to go out and I'm too ill, and Eddie's working nightshifts this week anyway, so I celebrated by sowing some seeds in front of the TV with a hot chocolate. What a way to spend a Friday night!

SOWN:
3 courgette 'Zuboda'
3 courgette 'Soleil F1'
2 melon 'Blenheim Orange'
5 surprise melons! ('Melon Sweet Medley' from Plants of Distinction)
2 watermelon 'Blacktail Mountain'
8 winter cabbage 'Quintal de Alsace'
8 autumn cabbage 'Kilaton F1'
8 calabrese 'Fiesta'
5 broccoli 'White Sprouting'
5 summer cabbage 'Vertus 2'
5 cauliflower 'All Year Round'
5 broccoli 'Iron Man'
5 brussels sprouts 'Bedford Winter Harvest'
5 brussels sprouts 'Evesham Special'

Maybe that doesn't seem like much - only five cauliflowers and five winter cabbages for example - but I've never grown brassicas before so this is a pretty big experiment! I thought I'd try just a few of lots of varieties, then when some fail there will be others to fall back on hopefully, and if they all work (fingers crossed) there should be a decent variety from summer right through to next February.

Our potatoes finally arrived yesterday, a horrifying 41 days after ordering! I won't be doing that again. Good job I don't believe too much in chitting. I've stuck the earlies on a tray by the window but I'm not sure they'll do anything before I plant them - I was hoping to get them in nice and early this year!

I have terrible trouble trying to choose potato varieties, so I let Kitchen Garden Magazine choose for me and ordered their 'continuity potato collection' from the February issue. It's ten tubers each of Arran Pilot (first early), Charlotte and Kestrel (second earlies) and Cara (maincrop).


Here they are, with my onions, garlic and shallots which arrived last week but I haven't had opportunity to plant yet. I was hoping to get it done this weekend, but I've hatched a plan for permanently marking out the beds and I want to get it done before I plant, and since the weather's looking so grim for tomorrow I'm not sure I'll get to the plot at all... We'll see...

1 comment:

Pepette said...

Happy birthday!

I didn't chit my Potatoes last year and they did just fine, so don't worry too much about it!

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