It’s dark and dismal with intermittent hail showers. Far too cold for gardening, at least outdoors gardening. There’s always plenty to do in the shed, like cleaning plant pots, but when it’s like this all we want to do is hunker down. Sprouting seeds is a soft option, we’ve got cress on the go: And [...]
Entries from January 30th, 2012
Brr
January 29th, 2012 · 1 Comment · Growing, Tips and tricks
It’s turning cold and we had a good hard frost last night. “Good” because we need a cold spell to deal with an ongoing infestation of whitefly on our broccoli and kale plants. We garden without the use of chemicals as far as we can so insecticide is not an option. Whitefly can be washed [...]
Under attack
January 22nd, 2012 · No Comments · Problems
OK, we live in the country so we expect to share our property with wildlife. This year they seem to want to cozy up a bit too much for comfort. We’ve had mice in the loft – deterred by those electronic devices that emit an ultrasonic screech. We’ve had a rabbit gain unauthorized access to [...]
Onion seedlings update
January 18th, 2012 · No Comments · Growing
We were too quick to announce the appearance of our first onion seedling in a previous post of the 6th January. That turned out to be a weed – one of the few downsides of using home made compost. However, we now have lots of confirmed onion seedlings up – they come up bent double [...]
White broccoli
January 14th, 2012 · 2 Comments · Cropping, Use
We’ve been watching the white broccoli plants grow bigger and bigger, wondering if they will ever produce sprouts. Well, now they have. We had our first taste of them for dinner tonight – tender and succulent, nothing like their stronger flavoured purple cousins. Apparently, if you let the sprouts develop they have a sort of [...]
Chitting
January 12th, 2012 · 8 Comments · Growing, Preparation, Storing
We’ve started chitting this year’s seed potatoes. It seems a bit early but B&Q have them in and they’re chitting in the store. We don’t want to be caught out – some years seed potatoes sell so quickly you can’t get the varieties you want. These are, from front to back: 1st earlies – Pentland [...]
Back in action
January 8th, 2012 · No Comments · Projects, Tips and tricks
At last, the wind has died down. We got out for a bike ride today and saw our first snowdrops of the year. Admittedly, they were next to a warming little river but nevertheless a sign that things are on the move. Freddie, our pigeon scaring falcon, is back up on his new bendy pole [...]
We’re off!
January 6th, 2012 · 1 Comment · Growing
Our first seedling of the year poked it’s innocent little head up out of the compost today – a baby Red Brunswick onion, hopefully one of many to come: There are other signs of rebirth around the garden, including daffodil bulb shoots, these are in the lawn: There are more advanced daffodil shoots in some [...]
High winds bring Freddie down
January 5th, 2012 · No Comments · Problems
Had to search for the compost bin lids this morning; very strong winds swept Norfolk last night. Found them both eventually. Freddie, our faithful plastic falcon, was downed too. The wind snapped his bamboo pole: We’ll give him a new pole and a fresh springy bamboo cane. He’s proving to be quite high maintenance but [...]
So it begins
January 1st, 2012 · 1 Comment · Growing, Preparation
Managed to get a bit done between late rising (post New Year’s Eve) and rain arriving. First we riddled some seed compost using our own well rotted vegetable matter: Then we sowed the first seed of the year. Edwin, John’s dad, used to sow his onion seeds on New Years Day every year and his [...]
