A Productive Day

We were planning all week to visit the allotment for a bit of a tidying-up session on Saturday. It was a bit of a surprise when the temperatures suddenly dropped, after all this mild weather we've had, and we woke up to a fairly hard frost. It was pretty though.

 Young Lamb's Lettuce

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

It didn't put us off - I dug my thermals out and we spent a lovely day at the plot, pruning, weeding and tidying.

First job was to sort the compost out. After failing to spread any last year, we had two bins three-quarters full of decent compost with a layer of newish material on top, and a couple of random heaps elsewhere just because we had nowhere to put them. We forked the uncomposted stuff out of one bin and removed six barrowfuls of lovely compost, then started again with the plot's winter waste and tree prunings at the bottom, the other random heaps, and then the layer of uncomposted stuff from the other bin, leaving us a huge heap of the black stuff very nearly ready to use in the other bin too!

I pruned our two 'spur' fruit trees, confident for the first time that I knew what I was doing, having picked up a little book about pruning over Christmas! I always feel mean cutting them back though - they're so spindly!

The apple tree, on the left, is leaning rather badly after a heavy harvest and strong winds during the summer. I'm not really sure how I should try to straighten it - or whether I shouldn't. Any ideas?

Finally, we decided that since the pond was frozen virtually solid (but the soil was perfectly workable), it would be a good time to dig out our huuuuge clump of horseradish from right beside it. Planting it here was a big mistake and, although I know we will have left roots behind and it'll be back, I'm going to try to get rid of it altogether.

It was hard work, but we got the whole crown out along with several thick roots from beneath. We brought home 5.6 kilos of horseradish! That's a lot of roast beef dinners! I'll have to read up on other uses of the stuff and try to preserve some too.

It was a good day and it felt great to get a head start on the new growing season. I don't think I've ever had such a productive January on the plot before - it has certainly never looked so tidy at this time of year!

 Cotoneaster in the garden

Winter Growings

Well, the temperatures are dropping at last, and I'm glad to say our garlic, onions and shallots have put on some decent growth despite a late start.

 

I had some pepper plants still going on the patio, hoping the little green fruits would get larger, but now one or two have started to show frost damage so I've finished off all those remaining.

Meanwhile, the chilli plant we brought indoors has decided to make up for its pathetic summer crop by flowering again. We will have Christmas chillies!

The plant seems to have a problem though, with several leaves turning yellow and dropping off, and traces of cobweb around the leaves. Looks like spidermite, methinks. (If anyone knows better, do tell...)

 

I'm reluctant to spray the plant while it's fruiting, but misting daily with water is supposed to help so I must get myself a new spray bottle (my old one doesn't work anymore) and start this a.s.a.p!

Half of the summer's chilli harvest...

The outdoor sowings I made in early autumn have had mixed results - the spinach has all died, the perpetual spinach has mildew and is being eaten by snails, the Nero di Toscana has been munched, the winter gem lettuce never came up... But the spring onions, radishes and claytonia are doing marvellously, and I've tucked them up in the plastic greenhouse for winter. In fact, the claytonia has self-seeded prolifically and is coming up everywhere... 

I'm not sure exactly what happens from here; will my salad crops keep growing slowly and steadily throughout winter, or do they stop completely and give me an early crop in the spring? I'll soon find out, I suppose... It would have been ideal to start them a month or two earlier so I could pick some during the winter - must try harder next year!

The purple sprouting brocolli and kale are still battling on and, barring any disasters over winter, should be ready to give me a great crop as soon as the weather warms up for spring. Not every plant has put on satisfactory pre-winter growth, but as long as I get them through the winter I'm sure they'll catch up.

Next task, now we've had a few decent frosts, is to get back to the plot and dig the parsnips up to store in a box of soil in a sheltered spot at home, safe from frozen ground, snails and flooding!

Hurrah!

Our strawberries survived the frost! And what a lot of them there are!

I'd better get some straw...

Very pleased to see fruit forming on our apple trees too. The biggest harvest we've had from this tree previously was four apples, but this year there are four per branch! Will they all last...?

And this tree has never given us so much as a single blossom before, but this year is doing so much better!

The Last Frost?

So May brings frost again, after weeks and weeks of warmth. Fickle English weather...

We hauled all our 100 tomatoes, peppers, sweetcorn, squashes and tender herbs - and even the strawberries in their big tub - indoors overnight on Tuesday. Our tiny flat looked like a jungle! And I was glad we did - in the morning the minimum temp. thermometer in the garden showed -2C! I realised I'd forgotten all about the french beans and the petunia seedlings and they had stayed out for the night, but they seem unharmed, which is a relief. We took the same precaution last night too, but the temperature only dropped to 3C - enough to give the peppers and tomatoes a bit of a shock but not to do them any real harm.

I have yet to check the situation on the allotment. The potatoes aren't showing any shoots yet thanks to a later sowing than usual (hurrah!) so they'll be okay, and I'd just harvested all the asparagus more than about two inches high so if that got frozen, wastage will be minimal. But the poor strawberries were unprotected and already well on their way to fruiting. Of course, strawberry plants are fine outdoors all winter long, but the flowers and fruits, when they're out, are much more tender and may be damaged by freezing. I'm afraid they're all going to be mush.

Looking at the weather forecast now though, it seems we're in for a pretty warm spell. The long-range forecast doesn't expect temperatures below 7C for the next two weeks, which takes us to late May, and I'm thinking... is it safe?

'The Last Frost Date' is an abstract and elusive thing. Books, magazines, TV presenters and seed packets will refer casually to it, as if it's a well known set-in-stone fact, but try to find out what it is for your area and it's a whole nother story. Since I started gardening a few years back I've taken it to be the first week of June, but I can't remember now where I got that idea from. And actually, I've often planted tender veg out in early to mid-May and never, ever lost any. Having tried to look up the date for my area again today, my mind's boggling. Although there's a general consensus that you're safe in mid-June, some websites have confidently informed me I can plant tender veg out from the start of May, and one said in mid-April! No way! And there's no hint as to where they're getting their information from. You'd think the Met Office would make such an important set of records available, but nope, can't find anything useful there either. The Gardener's Almanac has brought a lot of gardeners' records together to show which week of the year last frosts were reported on, by region, but the map's not detailed enough to figure out which box I'm in - it could be anything from the 17th week of the year to the 20th (we're in the 18th now). And records posted by individuals show that the actual last frost date in a given area can vary by several weeks - even a couple of months!

It's all about knowing when it's absolutely safe, of course, not about planting as soon as you possibly can. But I'm just an impatient kinda person, okay? Not to mention tired of looking after so many tiny pots that dry out really fast... and short of space... and worried about my tomatoes flowering too soon...

I'm gonna give it another week or so and reassess... It's not like the squash beds are ready yet anyway! In the meantime, when is YOUR last frost date perceived to be, and where are you? Is that date what you've observed, or what you've read (and if so, where?!)

A Funny Old Business

Germination's a funny old business, isn't it? They say seeds need three (or four) things to wake from 'quiescence' (that's sleepy-time to you and me) and start growing:

• Water - well that's the obvious one. All life needs water.
• Warmth - although while peppers and squashes need a good warm room to do their thing, radishes and lettuces can germinate around 4 C. While we often associate higher soil temperatures with good germination, some seeds require a period of cold first. In other climates, some require a forest fire!
• Air - yup, they need to breathe just like us, so soil mustn't be waterlogged, and seeds too deep won't grow. Some seeds have a hard outer shell that excludes air, and need a bit of wear or a hard frost to split the shell before germination can begin.
• Light - not all seeds require light, but some do; for example woodland flowers which grow in very early spring while the trees are bare and the sunlight reaches the forest floor.

But is this a formula for success? We should be so lucky.

I've always thought myself quite fortunate when it comes to parsnip seeds (which have a particularly poor reputation when it comes to germination) but when I think about it now, it's not so surprising. I tend to plant a whole pack of seeds in a row - that's 150 or thereabouts - after all there's no point saving them for next year as they lose their vitality so quickly. Then later I thin them where they're too close together, but I'm hardly thinning 150 parsnips - maybe half that. It's just that I sow so thickly I seem to do well.

This year I station-sowed my parsnips in a grid, and though I have lots of healthy seedlings, several of the 'stations' are still empty. If only I hadn't used the whole pack... At least parsnip seed is cheap; I popped to Wilko's yesterday and (after weeding all the fat hen out of the bed) filled in the gaps with a second sowing.

My sweetcorn came up last week - every single seed I sowed, and within just a few days! Thank you Real Seeds!

Yet I am still waiting for any action in the summer savory pots (old seed, but still just about in date)...

...or from the poppies (brand new seed, and not cheap!). These were sown way back in March. Actually look - that one in the middle is doing something. Has that one had more water than the others? More light or air? A different temperature? Nope.

And germination's been really patchy (about 35%) from the 'Bright Lights' chard (three righthand rows) - just one year old - while the brand new perpetual spinach seeds (lefthand row and very closely related) have all come up without a problem.

My 'Baby Bear' pumpkin seeds from Mr Fothergills have been in the soil for weeks, and they're my second attempt - I was just getting ready to have a good old rant about it... Then suddenly, and in perfect synchrony, up they popped. (The first sowing still hasn't done anything, despite getting exactly the same indoor temperatures.)

Am I going somewhere with this? Sort of, I suppose...

If you're the kind of person that needs to be in control, don't try gardening. Like the grinding of tectonic plates or the power of the wind or the frost that probably turned my unfleeced strawberries to mush on the allotment last night or the snail-that-got-away munching down your brand new cucumber seedlings, we're at nature's mercy and we have to roll with the punches. In all things, it pays to be adaptable and flexible and to work with nature wherever possible, because one thing's for certain: it's not going out of its way to work with you!

The Waiting Game

I hate this waiting game... Do I reeeally have to wait until June to plant my tender veg out? Will we reeeally have any more frost before then? We haven't had any all month, and the tomatoes and peppers have been living outside in the semi-shelter of the open plastic greenhouse for weeks now (although I did bring 100 young plants indoors on Wednesday night when it looked like temperatures might drop to 3 or 4).  Every year I've got away with planting things out early to mid-May, although our 11th May frost last year was a bit close for comfort!

The tomato plants are really shooting up now, and have a fair few buds...

And even the courgettes and squashes are threatening to go crazy!

So I've taken the plunge and planted my first couple of tomatoes out - in pots, so I can still drag them indoors overnight if I need to. One 'Sub-Arctic Plenty'...

And one 'Hundreds and Thousands'.

The growbag toms will have to wait a couple more weeks; I'm not dragging growbags indoors!

And I've even sown some French beans (Delinel) in a planter (errr, plastic storage box), which are pushing through very enthusiastically.

Now, roll on mid-May and more warm weather, please. And I'd better catch up on digging the squash patch!

Dagnammit!

The green bits you see in the photo below are weeds. The dead-looking frostbitten brown bits - they're our potatoes.

This has never happened before, and I've never taken any precautions before. Just goes to show, I think, how early our last frost truly must be. Usually. The damage is not too bad - we've earthed up again to cover the tops and I'm hoping the plants will recover. If there's anything else I can do to help them, someone please let me know!

I read somewhere that frost could be a risk to our strawberry flowers too, but thankfully they seem unharmed. However, the asparagus is another story. We had planned an asparagus dinner for tonight, but all the spears are mushy and bad. This has never happened before either, and I've NEVER read that asparagus needed frost protection!

Frost trouble aside, we had quite a productive day of sowing and planting today. I have finally decided to invest in materials for a brassica cage. The flea beetles, pigeons and butterflies round here are enough to put anyone off, but hopefully with a little expense on some decent protection, we may have our first broccoli this year! Hurrah!

So I got busy sowing:
5 x White Sprouting Broccoli
5 x Purple Sprouting Broccoli 'Rudolph'
10 x Broccoli 'Ironman F1' - a summer/autumn variety
and some more marigolds

I have some spring cabbage I must remember to sow in July too. Cauliflower and brussels sprouts can wait until I've got my confidence back!

The last of my mail-order plants for the year came today as well. Winter Savory (right) and Chamomile (left) for the herb garden, as well as a couple of others I will go into detail about some other time...

They are now planted out happily in the herb garden.

And here are my leeks, fresh from Mr Fothergill's since I didn't sow any in time:

It was supposed to be 30 Carlton F1 - a summer/autumn variety - and 30 Sultan F1 - a hardy winter-standing variety - but instead they sent me 60 Carlton. I have been messed around by plant mail-order companies more times than I can count now - I keep saying I'm going to stop using them but I never do...

I planted them out anyway - well, most of them - and they will have to do their best. They're in four rows of 13, about 6 inches apart. To plant leeks you dib a 6" deep hole (I use the handle of my hoe) and just drop the seedling in and water it. You don't fill the holes in - just leave them to get filled up with leek! That way the stems stay white in the darkness underground, and they don't get too clogged up with dirt between the leaves. It always feels like a lazy way to plant - I love it!