The spuds are in!

Well, not ALL the spuds. Just the first ones. A significant milestone, nevertheless.

This year, as usual, I'm growing my potatoes in containers - big 35-litre plastic pots, like these:

I find these pots perfect for growing potatoes in. Being quite big they don't dry out too rapidly, but at the same time they are not so huge that I can't shift them around when needed - and you can see that they have handles to make moving them easier. I got them from a company called LBS Horticultural Supplies Ltd.

On this occasion I was planting-up my First Early potatoes, the ones that mature quickly and are harvested as small "new potatoes". I have two tubers each of five varieties: "Pentland Javelin", "Rocket", "Lady Christl", "Colleen" and "Sherine".

The growing-medium I'm using consists of a mix of garden soil, homemade compost and composted stable manure, enhanced with a handful of proprietary potato fertiliser in each pot. When potatoes are grown in pots (which are prone to drying-out if not regularly watered) it is important to incorporate a good proportion of organic matter because the new tubers are likely to develop Scab if their soil is too dry.

I fill the pots only about half-full at first, use a trowel to make suitable holes, then plant the potatoes two to a pot, after which I cover them to a depth of only about 3 inches. Once the plants begin to grow and the shoots emerge I will progressively top up the pots with more of the growing-medium until they are nearly full.

I plant the two seed-tubers fairly close to one another, in the centre of the pot. [Of course the tubers were covered-over after this photo!]

The final part of the process is to cover the pots with my little plastic greenhouses, which will protect them from frost and wind. You'll notice that I have weighted them down with bricks (one at each corner) to stop them blowing away.

Each of those greenhouses covers four pots, though on this occasion I only planted a total of 5 pots-worth (i.e. 10 tubers).

I'll use exactly the same procedure in a couple of weeks' time when I plant the Second Earlies.

Planting out my onions

Last year I grew some onions by a different method. Instead of growing each onion separated from its fellows, I grew them in clumps. This allowed me to produce many more onions, although of course they were much smaller ones. We found the small onions very versatile in the kitchen - there are times when a big onion is more than you need. I'm using this technique again this year.

This year I sowed my onion seeds in the first week of February, and brought them on first indoors and then in my coldframe. For the last few days they have been outdoors all day, acclimatising. Now I have planted them out in one of my raised beds.

I had available a total of 24 pots / clumps of onion seedlings - 9 each of "Bedfordshire Champion" and "Elista and Karminka mix", and 6 of "Ailsa Craig" - but in the end I only used 20, because I felt that any more would have made them too crowded. Anyway, it leaves me with four spares ready to cope with any emergencies!

I put the onions in two rows of 10, with about 20cm between clumps, and the rows about 30cm apart.

I have left room in this bed for a row of Beetroot, which I will be sowing soon.

As regular readers know, I get a lot of problems with foxes / badgers / cats digging in my raised beds and little seedlings are never safe without protection, so immediately after planting I covered the onions with netting. I have a good collection of aluminium rods of various lengths and some of the "Build-a-Ball" sets for joining them together, so it was easy enough to construct a suitable frame.

The frame was then covered with black fabric netting which was weighted-down with some bricks.

That should keep the little blighters off!

Now all I have to do is wait for the onions to grow. They require very little maintenance, just weeding whenever necessary and occasional watering. They should be ready for harvesting some time in August, I reckon.

Chitting potatoes

I normally plant the first of my potatoes in mid to late March, so it's nearly time to do that. For the last two months my seed-potatoes have been chitting in preparation for this. "What does chitting mean?" I hear you ask. Well, it means this >>>>

Chitting is the word used to mean the formation of stem shoots on the seed-tubers. It's a way of accelerating a potato plant's growth, because a seed-tuber that has been chitted will develop its stems more quickly once planted than one which has not been chitted. The practice is not strictly necessary, but it's a technique used by gardeners for many generations and still used by most amateur growers.

To produce good strong chits / shoots, the seed potatoes should be placed in a cool light place. If they are too warm or too much in the dark they will produce pale spindly shoots. Mine have been on a windowsill in an unheated spare bedroom, aka junk-room!

This is the sort of chit I aim for - sturdy and dark-coloured.

Most of the shoots on a potato appear on the so-called "Rose" end - the end furthest from where the potato was originally attached to its parent plant. In order to give the chits the best opportunity to sprout, many people like to put their seed-tubers in egg-boxes or something similar which can support them in a suitable stance with the rose end uppermost.

I have found that sometimes egg-boxes are too small to accommodate the bigger tubers, and I have acquired a couple of long containers with four larger compartments, which are ideal. These originally held Persimmon fruits, bought from a supermarket.

So anyway, I reckon that my potatoes are ready to go whenever the weather is suitable. I've been looking at the 10-day forecast and I reckon I might be planting this coming weekend. I'm not too worried about frost, because my spuds will be planted into containers, protected in their early days by little plastic green houses. I want good weather for planting for selfish reasons - I don't want to get cold and wet while doing it!

Potato containers inside plastic greenhouses (pic from 2018)

Planting Broad Beans

In my last post I described how my garden is currently almost bare, waiting for the new year's sowings and plantings. This week I planted out my first crop of 2020 - Broad Beans (aka Fava beans). These ones are a fast-growing variety called "Express".

As usual, I sowed my beans in individual modules and germinated them indoors to bring them on more quickly. After germination they were moved to the big coldframe for about two weeks, and then they spent a few days outdoors during the day and inside the coldframe at night. On Wednesday this week I judged them to be big enough and strong enough for planting out.

The site I chose for them is my "Woodblocx" raised bed, which stands apart from my other ones. I haven't grown Broad Beans in it for several years. A few days before planting I had given the bed a thin layer of home-made compost (I would have used more if I had had any!) and lightly forked it over. The soil in this bed is already light and fertile but an annual dose of fresh compost keeps it in good condition.

Before planting the Broad Beans I laid them out in a row to make sure I got the spacing right. I had 14 plants available, but I only used 10 because I didn't want them to be too crowded. With a row of ten they end up being about 20cm apart.

Planting was a very quick job - make a hole with a trowel; insert plant; backfill with soil and tamp down; done! It was gratifying to see that the plants all had really well-developed root systems, which hopefully means they will grow up big and strong.

There we are -job done!

After planting I covered the row of beans with two of my venerable "Longrow" tunnel-cloches. When I first got these I reckoned them to be very flimsy and thought they wouldn't last very long, but I have been proved wrong. I can't remember when I bought them but it was probably at least ten years ago.

Covering the plants with cloches serves two purposes: it protects them from the weather (we have gales of wind again here); and it protects them from the Night-time Diggers (i.e. foxes, badgers, cats etc) which cause such havoc in my garden if I don't take precautions.

The other half of this bed will be used for a similar row of beans, but of a different variety - "Imperial Green Longpod", which are about two weeks behind this first batch. In a garden as small as mine I could never hope to grow enough beans to make it worthwhile freezing any, so I just stagger the harvest by growing two types and sowing them a couple of weeks apart. This way I should be cropping Broad Beans for about 4 or 5 weeks, but not till late June or early July.

By the way, on the same day that I planted the beans (my first planting of 2020) I also harvested the first few spears of my Purple Sprouting Broccoli, sown last May. Seems fitting, doesn't it?

PSB "Red Arrow"

Back to Square One

Yes, I know it is possible to keep a garden populated with vegetables all year round, but I prefer to start "from scratch" each year. At present my veg-plot is almost completely empty. I have two Purple Sprouting Broccoli plants that have just started cropping (having been in the ground since last May!), and a few endives under the cloches, but apart from the fruit trees and perennial herbs, that's it.

After such a mild, wet Winter, all the "hardware" (wooden raised beds etc) is covered in green algae. We need a spell of warm sunny weather to brighten things up a bit. A few days ago I did one of my least favourite jobs of the year - emptying the compost bins. Usually my compost turns out pretty well, thanks to the millions of worms that inhabit it, but this year it is very poor - wet and slimy, with only a thin layer of "good stuff" at the bottom. I think this is probably because the compost bins have not been able to drain as well, as the soil on which they stand has been waterlogged for months.

I did manage to get enough material to put a thin layer on three of my five raised beds, and a bit for the potted fruit trees, but it was nowhere near as much as usual. The black pots seen in the foreground of the next photo are not filled with fresh compost, regrettably. They hold a soil+compost mix from last year, which I will use (enhanced by some new material) for growing my potatoes.

These are two of the beds to which I have applied the compost.

After applying the compost I just work it into the soil a little, level it off and leave it for a few days before sowing or planting anything. This gives the birds an opportunity to scratch about in it to find any lurking insects. I know from bitter experience that anything planted into fresh compost is almost certainly going to be damaged or destroyed, mainly by Blackbirds, which are an absolute menace in this part of the world.

Likewise, I don't attempt to dig-in the compost around the fruit trees, because there would be a strong likelihood of damaging their roots, many of which are quite close to the surface. I just let the rain and the worms do their thing.

Apple tree in 60L pot

Assuming the weather is all right, by which I mean drier and hopefully sunny (although this seems unlikely just now!), I plan to plant out my onions and my first batch of Broad Beans in about a week or ten days' time. Right now they are outside in the fresh air, but still in their little pots, gradually getting used to the outdoor life. Both of these vegetables are very hardy, by the way, and I don't anticipate they will have any problems making the transition.

This year, in view of all the uncertainties raised by Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, I'll be growing mostly basic staples, and not many exotics or unusual veg, just in case fresh veg becomes harder to buy. In any case I probably won't be sowing any seeds in the raised beds for a while. It doesn't make sense to sow them while the soil is still cold and wet - they wouldn't do well, and seeds sown later always seem to catch up anyway. Meanwhile, I shall sit back and enjoy the sheer potential of all those empty beds for a while longer!

Transplanting chillis

I sowed my chilli seeds on Valentine's day (14th Feb), and they have now grown to a size where they needed potting-on - by which I mean putting each seedling into a separate pot.

I had ten such pots, two each of five different varieties, and each pot had either 3 or 4 seedlings in it. I think I have mentioned before that my pack of "Cayenne Mix" seeds (which was supposedly going to deliver chillis with fruits of 4 different colours) only had a total of six seeds in it! For this reason I'm going to grow all six, in the hope of getting at least one of each colour. For the others, I plan to keep the best two seedlings and discard or give away the remainder.

In theory therefore, for each variety I can choose two plants from eight candidates. Sometimes it's difficult to choose which are the best, but on other occasions it's much easier. Look at this: two pots sown on the same day with four seeds each; same seed variety; same batch of seeds; same compost; treated exactly the same way - but one pot has produced four big strong seedlings and the other has produced four much smaller, weaker ones!

Sometimes you get a few sub-standard seedlings. For instance the one seen in the foreground in the photo below, which has grown "blind" - in other words the growing-point has failed to develop. This would most probably never grow into a good plant, which emphasises the wisdom of sowing more seeds than the number of plants you think you will need.

So, to transplanting... Tapping the pots firmly on the underneath, I eased out each clump of seedlings and gently separated them before quickly re-planting the best ones in individual pots, using fresh compost. At this stage I did not give them bigger pots, since they now have as much space as was previously used by four plants. These are 7cm pots, by the way.

The little plants understandably experience a bit of transplant shock, which causes them to droop for a while.

I help them to get over this by giving them a good drink of lukewarm water, and by putting them back in the Growlight House as soon as possible, so that they can benefit from its light and gentle warmth.

They normally perk up pretty soon and begin to enjoy their opportunity to spread out without competition from their siblings! This photo was taken about two hours after the previous one:-

Right, so now that the chillis have reached this point, I will start thinking about sowing my tomato seeds. The procedure I use for them is exactly the same as for the chillis, so that Growlight House needs to be vacated within the next two weeks!

Waking up

My blog has been "resting" since October, but I feel ready to start it up again, so Hello everyone!

From a gardening point of view, 2020 has got off to a really bad start, with a succession of severe storms, each bringing violent winds and floods of rain. To be honest, here in NE Hampshire we have fared quite well compared with most parts of the country, but the weather has still been foul, and certainly not conducive to sowing or planting anything outdoors.

I've been really glad to have my big upright coldframe, which is heavy enough to resist being blown away. It has helped me to get a few things started without having to subject them to the rigours of the weather.

Onions (front) and Broad Beans (rear)

I'm growing my onions in clumps again, like I did last year. This year I have three types - "Ailsa Craig", "Bedfordshire Champion" and a mixture of "Elista and Karminka". These latter ones are long-shaped ones, which should be ideal for salad onions.

I have also started off two batches of Broad Beans. My technique is to sow the beans in individual modules and germinate them indoors. When they germinate they are moved out to the coldframe to grow on a bit before being planted out in one of the raised beds when the weather abates. Aiming for a successional crop my first batch is of the variety "Express" which is supposedly very quick-maturing. The others are an old favourite called "Imperial Green Longpod". As the name suggests, it produces long pods filled with green (as opposed to grey) beans.

Broad Beans "Express"

Over the Winter I was cropping Brussels Sprouts ("Evesham Special"), and I'm happy report that we were able to eat home-grown sprouts with our Christmas Dinner. Unfortunately many of the sprouts "blew" - in other words went to leaf without producing tight buds. However, my four plants still produced a viable crop, and I'll persevere with this vegetable because I'm doing better each year. One day I'll have a crop I'm really proud of, I'm sure! The Brussels Sprouts have been sharing a bed with my Purple Sprouting Broccoli plants, which are just about to deliver their first spears, so today I removed the spent sprout plants to give the PSB a clear run.

Old Brussels Sprout plant just prior to removal.

Last year I had four PSB plants and they produced a huge crop, but my wife Jane is not really all that keen on this vegetable and it's normally me that eats most of it, so this time round I have only grown two plants. One of them (a "Red Arrow" one) is nice and big, but the other (an "Early Purple Sprouting" one) is pathetically small. I don't think I'll grow the latter variety again. Here you see them side-by-side...

I can see that the "Red Arrow" is going to give me a nice crop:

PSB "Red Arrow"

But the "Early Purple Sprouting" will probably only produce about half a dozen spears.

PSB "Early Purple Sprouting"

I also have some chillis on the go (of course!). As usual, I sowed them on 14th February (Valentine's Day). I germinated them in the airing-cupboard and then transferred them to my Growlight House.

Again, last year I grew far too many chillis and there are only so many that we can use (we mostly made them into Sweet Chilli Sauce), so this year I'm going easy on them. In fact, I sowed 3 or 4 seeds in each of 16 little pots (covering 10 different varieties) and I plan to keep only a maximum of 2 plants of each type. As it happens, some of them didn't germinate (or haven't yet done so), so I'll probably end up with a manageable quantity. When choosing which ones to grow I had a big clear-out, disposing of the majority of my collection of chilli seeds, most of which were pretty old. The ones that I sowed but haven't come up were really Last Chance ones, so I'm not surprised that some of them haven't germinated.

We are still eating Endives, which have again done well over the Winter, growing slowly but steadily under their cloche protection. Until 2018 I had always treated my Endives as an Autumn crop, but in that season I accidentally sowed my Endives later than usual which meant that they were not ready for cutting at the normal time. I covered them with cloches and hoped for the best. They produced some of the best Endives I've ever had, so this is what I did again in 2019. This is one that I cut this week:

Curly Endive - variety not known (it's from a mix)

In January I bought myself another Pear tree (a "Williams Bon Chretien" one), so I now have two potted Apple trees and two Pear trees. I have shuffled the pots around so that the two Apples are close to each other and the two Pears likewise, which I'm hoping will help with mutual pollination.

Apple trees in 60L pots

On the ornamental side of things, I have a good collection of Hellebores now (many of them have self-seeded), and they flowering at present, which brightens up the otherwise pretty dull garden.

So there we are, Mark's Veg Plot is back in business, but please be aware that I'm planning to post a bit less frequently this year, because I'm heavily involved with fungi-spotting as well these days, so my gardening-time is somewhat reduced!