Gardening Guilts and signs of spring

You may have noticed I've been a bit remiss with my blogs. Well I tend to write when I'm doing lots in the garden and I feel inspired... of late, it hasn't felt like there's been much to write about and that's because the snow's been stalling me.  Really?  I think that's just an excuse!  And gardening at the lovely Urban Veg just makes me feel more guilty about my absence from my own patch.  There we've been sowing broad beans and salads for the green house and its really starting to be populated with baby seedlings and lots of seed trays. 

Meanwhile, at home my seed box has barely had a ruffle since I restocked it over Christmas.  I should be sewing those seeds that need an extra long season like the chillies and the aubergines (summer willing - pleeeease!).  All my seeds are organised in month order so its not as if its hard to do and over Christmas I bought my seed compost so there really is no excuse.  Hopefully committing my gardening guilts will spur me into action!

In terms of the garden, hey it might be winter still but there seems to be lots of signs of life starting up.  We may be getting lots of snow but that's not halting everything out there.  Over the Christmas period garlic started to peer through the soil and the HSL crimson broad beans germinated (I think something got a taste for one of them though) and despite the snow keeping the ground cold there are some lovely rhubarb shoots in such a vivid red and little lush leaves making a start.  The chives are starting to grow too. 

So if the more hardy residents of the plot are braving their first shoots I really should get on with my window sill sowing in earnest and dust off the heated propagator for those chillies and long season tenders.  Its about time my windowsills are bursting with young seedlings!

We have crops! Broadbeans to the rescue!!

Finally a moment of elation this growing season!!!

We have broadbeans big enough to cook with!

Its the first year I've grown these and last weekend all of a sudden I noticed there were pods big enough to eat.  I meant to check them with my taste buds there and then but gardening jobs distracted me.  But tonight was the night I finally checked them and as soon as I started to open the furry jacket to try one I got nostalgic smells from childhood.  No doubt my father grew them for us when I was a child on the small holding.

Here's a pic of the first beauties I've brought into the kitchen - there were more I could have harvested but would like to savour the others fresh in another meal.

I grew them in a sack container in 50/50 vermicompost/spent compost mixture and the seeds were planted last October.

After many knock backs and trials and tribulations this season my passion for gardening is rushing back in leaps and bounds - even in a year as tough as this it really is worth all the graft.  There's nothing better than eating something you've grown from seed, fed with your homemade compost and your homemade fertilizer and finally savoured in your kitchen. 

June Storms

Recently we've had some pretty changeable weather to deal with.  We've had a 10 day summer inbetween lots of unseasonally cool days, followed by lots of rain and then an intense windy storm.

I hope you all fared better than me with the storms!

Prior to our 10 days of summer, I had put fleece over all my germinating seeds to stop the birds from eating them before they got a chance to sprout.  And then the sun came.  With high temperatures averaging 26 degrees C.  The week before we'd had temps around 12 C.  I took the decision to keep them veiled with their fleece as I thought the sun might scorch them and I think I was the only person waiting for that heat wave to end to unveil my little beauties!

And it really did feel like unveiling my patch!  All of a sudden the areas I'd planted were fully populated with seedlings of salad, roots, onions, radishes (including baby rat tail radishes), leeks and the peas finally germinated.

On Jubilee weekend I decided its now June - I can start planting the tenders out.  Naturally I made some bunting with some ribbon, old scraps of blue/white/red cloth and my sewing machine so the whole weekend was not just dedicated to gardening but I did find myself (inbetween watching the Jubilee celebrations on TV) trying to make a start on planting the tenders out. 

I planted out 4 sunflowers, 12 french beans and 4 winter squash.  I didn't have quite enough time to plant out the tomatoes and the remaining winter squash and sunflowers.  I also left some flowers to plant out later.  They were all residing in my plastic greenhouse.

Then the rain came down, and it carried on coming down all week ending in a great big finale of a storm on Friday with very high winds.  I came home to find the greenhouse flat on the floor.  We were devastated!  We love tomatoes!!! 

I rescued all the seedlings one by one, my boyfriend helped me with the carnage.  It was hard work as I'd just come down with a cold and cancelled a weekend to London where I would have been helping my friends at Transition Town Wandsworth's Bramford Community Gardens with their Open Squares event. 

I moved them all the rescued seedlings into a shed, safe from the wind and naturally lost a few squash and some sunflowers - surprisingly all the tomatoes escaped unharmed.

Yesterday, I inspected the veg patch after the winds and all the supports were fine - naturally my boyfiend had done a sterling job with the plant supports a week earlier.  I only had one casualty on the plot - one of the winter squash had perished in the Friday storms.  Luckily I had germinated two of this italian pumpkin variety and this was one variety that had not perished in the greenhouse calamity.  So despite all the drama, I think the population of veg with all the heritage varieties amongst them had lucky escapes.

(I do realise in the grand scheme these are small problems in contrast to the people in Wales who had their homes completely flooded)

However, after all the doom, gloom and vegetable carnage, yesterday was a pleasantly sunny day with the elder flower in bloom and the blackberry bushes budding up with their flowers of promise.  So it was a day of planting - all the tomatoes are now in the new, slightly more secure home of the veg patch (that is providing we don't have another blight epidemic this year and with recent weather patterns this is highly likely!)

And today we are blessed with another sunny day - I really hope it follows true to the forecast today as they are predicting light showers in the evening.  If it remains I shall be planting out all the remaining seedlings currently in refuge in the shed and any seedlings that haven't made it will be laid to rest in my wormery to help those who made it with nutritious worm tea and worm cast!

I do hope the weather's going to start to be a little kinder to gardeners - it must be really challenging for those of us who are just starting out.

Project New Veg Plot Continues

Half a month on from my last post about the new garden and the veg plot has been fully deturfed and the rhubarbs been slightly thinned out!  (It was a very scrummy rhubarb crumble)

We then had that really harsh wind storm and I thought the next door neighbour's eucalyptus tree was going to come down on our garden, it was being whipped around like it was a bendy twig.

I was very relieved I hadn't planted anything into the veg patch by then or I would have been watching my poor veg being destroyed by the winds from the upstairs window or worst still traipsing through the wind and the rain with all manor of contraptions to try and save my poor veg.  This has happened before, sometimes during rain storms in the middle of the night and now I don't plant my beloved squash until after the 1st June for that very reason!

As quickly as the wind and rain came, within about 6 hours they abated and the following morning we had a really warm spring day with sunshine and temperatures in the plastic greenhouse reaching nearly 30 degrees.

This was most definitely a gardening day!!  I turned all the soil in the veg patch to loosen it up and get some air in and added all the worm casts my wormery to offer (and some bits that weren't strictly quite ready to use!) to add a bit of nutrition to the soil.  I dug this in to the upper layer of soil and then raked the whole bed.

With time I won't dig the patch so much, using spent roots to rot into the ground and add their own nutrients and not digging were possible.  However, this patch of ground has been grassed over for what looks like a considerable amount of time, certainly a few years so my thoughts were to initially loosen the soil ready for the population of veggies that will soon find their home there.

I then popped in for a cuppa and a sit on the sofa.  All that exercise had made me tired!  But I was still in gardening mode and on a roll so I didn't want to stop when I sat down for a rest.  I reached for a pad of paper and drew up a plan.

The plot is roughly 4m x 2m and can be neatly divided into 6 rows.  There are planks conveniently stacked against the fence at the end of the garden which I will use to make my paths.  Each of these rows I will divide into 4 squares (about 50cm square).  I got the inspiration for this plan from the square foot gardening idea.

Today its windy and rainy again but I'm itching to plant some peas, carrots and spring onions and get this plot started!!

Maybe the surface needs to be raked once more before I'm completely ready... Patience is a difficult thing when you're itching to have your own crops growing in your back garden!

Some ornamental winter salad

Here's a combination of mustard (purple) and lamb's lettuce. I grew them together in my plastic greenhouse over the winter as they are both supposed to be hardy enough to grow under protection in winter.  I had no idea what a pretty combination they would make!

Now inspired to mix lollo rosso lettuce with a really vibrant green one.  

Have you come across any beautiful salads?

Sowing in September

September is an interesting month in the garden.  Its harvest time with all the summer crops providing their bounty and there's lots to do in the kitchen if you like preserving all those summer goodies. 

September is also a good month to think about planning your way through the next season and there are a few things that can be sown now to help you through the sparse winter months.  Good planning and sowing now can also help make that hungry gap (between February - May) a little bit more bountiful.

Here's a few September sowing suggestions:

Cabbages (for spring hungry gap)
Chard
Corn Salad
Kai Lan
Kale (if you sow in the next week or so)
Kohl rabi
Komatsuna
Land Cress
Lettuce
Leaf Chicory
Mustard
Onions (from seed or bulbs)
Parsley
Radishes
Rocket
Shallots
Spinach

The effects of the lovely rain

Yesterday, in South London we had the first real rain showers since I think late April when we had a big thunder storm.

This morning I wondered through the garden at breakfast time (as is my morning ritual) looking for any new shoots and new signs of life/flowers when I stumbled upon the strawberries.  These strawberries arrived through the post as bare root plants last Friday with only little stumps where the leaves would sprout from.  Two days ago I gave them a little feed from the worm farm and yesterday mother nature decided to help me along too with some wonderful bursts of sheet rain.  All in all both of these have had a marvelous effect on these lovely strawberries. 
 
The interesting thing about rain water is that plants always look so much better after natural rainfall rather than from tap water.  Especially London water with its hard, lime scale.  Sure they need the tap water when nothing's coming from the sky, but there's something in the rain that just adds pure vitality to plants.

Ever the optimist, I am now even starting to hold out hope for some strawberries in around a month's time.  Maybe a little more rain please?  I shall keep you posted...

In the meantime, I shall continue to be grateful for yesterday's rain as the garden is looking even more lush than earlier this week.

The garden's starting to look lush again

Lately I've been feeling like the garden's starting to take shape and look like a well populated edible garden again.  Through the winter months I only had chives, rainbow chard, rosemary, sage, garlic and a trough of carrots/parsnips I  planted last spring.  Now as I stroll through my garden having a nose at what's going on its starting to feel... well like I have company again!

The tomatoes are starting to come along

the strawberries are making an appearance (these arrived just last week from bare root stock)

the french beans are climbing away,

the peas are flowering (I really like raw peas!).  I've counted 6 flowers so far and they've grown another foot since my pea blog 10 days ago.

 
the turnips are sprouting,

The pepper plant has lots of flowers.  (I think this is a capsicum judging by the leaves, it just sprouted from some soil and last year I grew both chillies and capsicums)

the tops of the potatoes are huge and look like they want to escape the potato bag I planted them in!

.... it really feels like my edible garden is starting to happen.

I am currently eating chard salads, radishes and making tea from the garden (mint and lemon verbena).  My cooking is being flavoured with chives, basil and coriander.

Every day I water and I look out for anything new - seeds that have sprouted, any new leaves, flower buds, etc.  I like this habit as it also means I spot the pests early and the aphids are enjoying this time in my garden as much as I am - squishing fingers at the ready (I garden organically).

I'm experimenting with turnips for the first time this year.  They came in a lucky dip seed packet from the Heritage Seed Library.  Normally I wouldn't choose them as my parents didn't grow this vegetable on the small holding when I was a child so it just isn't a habit in my family to grow them, but as I had some seed it was too good an opportunity to grow some and try it for myself.

Last week I sowed some Kai Lan seeds.  They came highly recommended by Mark Diacono and are perennial.  I am currently very interested in perennial edibles, especially plants that have ornamental appeal as well as the essential edible appeal.  I am always inspired to try new edibles, but the ornamental factor is inspired by my day job in my local garden centre.  The punters like things that look pretty.  If you have discovered any good perennial edibles lately, please do let me know as I love to experiment.  Even better if they can be grown in pots :)