All Hands On Deck

We've had a very busy couple of weeks in the garden. Along with continuing with successive sowing, I'm trying to keep on top of transplanting the young seedlings that are fast outgrowing the propagators.

Although I've seen most of my seeds germinate, it seems that I didn't provide them with enough light :-(

The broccoli in particular have long white stems, but tiny little leaves. Fortunately the weather is warming up nicely so today I moved all the plants out into the greenhouse, where there's a lot more light.

I've also started to sow directly out into my raised beds. Hopefully within the next few weeks we'll be seeing red and green mixed salad leaves, iceberg lettuce and radish. I've also sown onions, leeks and broccoli, which will hopefully provide us with food right through the year.

The Veg Patch Wakes Up

Well, after the coldest Winter that I can ever remember, it's been fantastic to get outside and start preparing for Spring. We constructed three raised beds and I've been busy sowing seeds ready for when (if!) the frosts finally stop. On 14th Feb I used my new propagator to sow leeks, onions, golden bell peppers, Romanian peppers, Hungarian hot wax peppers, jalapeno peppers, red cherry peppers and frigitello peppers.

Since my job involves being away for days at a time, my main focus this year is on keeping my plants watered. I've got a self watering propagator, which has capillary matting to keep my seeds from drying out while I'm away. Hopefully I'll have some success with this propagator, as I'm planning to sow a lot more seeds over the coming weeks, including tomatoes, sweetcorn, lettuce, courgettes and cucumbers.

Minimum Preparation - Maximum Results

In keeping with my mantra of "very little effort, money or skill", I can honestly say I've done nothing to prepare my soil. I know the books tell you to get your soil pH levels tested, mix certain ratios of poop to mud to get the best soil, and rotate your crops so all the nutrients aren't sucked out.

While I'm sure that all of these things make for a far better crop than mine, I'm only feeding 2 people and I want to spend as much time relaxing in my garden as I can. And faffing about with test tubes isn't my idea of a good time.

So I decided to take the lazy route. My theory is that if it's meant to be, it will be. If I plant a seed and it does well, then great. If it doesn't, then it's not suited to my garden for whatever reason and I should try something else. That way, I won't be wasting a load of time, effort or money on improving my soil for the sake of some cucumbers.

Using this theory I've grown 15 different types of veg in 3 years, and learnt a new lesson at each step of the way:

Potatoes - do too well, they need to be kept in a pot
Tomatoes - do better in the mud than in the growbag and much less watering required
Spring Onions - always seem to come back to life no matter how much they dry out
Radishes - grow from seeds sown straight into the ground but slugs love them
Cabbages - they get a lot bigger than you'd think, plant them far apart
Beetroot - so easy to grow, they survived under my cabbages with virtually no sunlight
Sweetcorn - take up a lot less space than you'd imagine
Squash - really fast growing
Lollo Rosso Lettuce - much hardier than I expected
Spinach - needs picking regularly, you'd only need one plant to feed two people all summer
Leeks - another vegetable that seems to need no water
Celery - just plant them through some black fabric and leave them to it
Carrots - sow the seeds in a pot, not directly in the ground

The only true failures I've had so far are peas and purple sprouting broccoli. I tried the peas twice with bad results both times. I'm going to give them one last chance, by growing them in a big pot. If I don't get any luck there, then I'll admit defeat. The broccoli was a heartbreaking disaster. Having just two plants survive my premature planting out was bad enough, but returning from holiday to find them utterly decimated by caterpillars was too much. Next year not only will I be more gentle with the planting out, I'll also be sure to keep them under a net.