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Skip to navigationThe first batches of veg have been in for four to six weeks now so I thought it would be time for a quick update. As it’s our first season of growing our own veg I wasn’t too sure how it would turn out as we don’t really know much about growing produce and we’ve just moved into the house so we don’t know much about the state of the soil in the garden either.
Thankfully the previous owners grew some of their own vegtebles so we were a confident that the soil would be ok, and they also left us three raised beds that we could use almost immedieltly. I’ve been quite surprised how things are getting on in our patio bed. Initially we planted Sugar Snap Peas, Spinach and Rocket. The Spinach was desimated within the first few weeks. Only a few seedlings survived, so I’ve planed out some more established seedlings that were grown indoors, so we’ll see how they progress.
The rocket has been growing really well. I went a little bit overboard when planting the seeds and have already thinned them out twice but it’s grown amazingly well and tastes superb!
We also have sugar snap peas. Initially we planed out four seedlings which we started indoors. Once they got going we planted a few more seeds about 4 weeks later which are just getting to the size where they need some support.
After hearing about others having issues, we thought we’d try out luck with carrots in one of the raised beds. So far they seem to be doing ok! We’ve planed salad onions on one side, and normal onions (from sets) on the other. So hopefully that will keep the carrot fly away. We’ve noticed some mice around our compost bin, and have heard stories of mice helping themselves to carrots, so we’ll have to wait until we take them up to see how well they’ve grown
We have one smaller bed at the end of the garden that we’re using to grow veg that doesn’t need such deep soil (as we’re not sure what’s underneath the bed). So we’re growing lettuce which is coming on pretty well.
And finally we dug out a small area of dead space between the shed and the compost bin, and planed our seed potatoes. We’ve gone for four types (first earlies, second earlies, main crop and salad potatoes). They’re coming on really well
We have a few more things that have been started indoors and are ready to be planted out soon, so let’s hope we’re not too late for what’s left!
Tags: Garden, veg
Tags: Garden, veg
Veg plan update…
March 21st, 2009 19:21 in Garden by JonI spent a few hours in the garden today and managed to get the raised beds finished and the first few things planted out. I realised that we’d been a little bit over-optimistic with our plan for one of the beds so I thought I would post the revisions to our original plan.
We’ve had to scrap plans to plant broccoli, turnip, swede, radishes, and butternut squash in the bed at the end of the garden so we’ll have to dig over another patch of garden for those. I managed to plant out the mange tout, peas, spinach, rocket, potatoes (all of them), lettuce, gem lettuce, spring onions and carrots. I’ve started off some cauliflower and parsley in the propagator so we’ll have to see how they turn out over the next few weeks.
Tags: Garden, plan, vegetables
Tags: Garden, plan, vegetables
The new garden
March 7th, 2009 10:10 in Garden, Personal by JonAfter my last post about our new house, I thought I’d follow it up with a post about our garden. Going from a two bedroom flat, to a house, having a garden of our own is a novelty. We’ve been saying for years that we want to grow our own vegetables and actually spend time in the garden so we spent last weekend digging out some of the raised beds and a patch at the back of the garden for potatoes.
We’ve been inspired by Vegmonkey and the Mrs and their planting plan so we’ve decided to come up with our own planting plan and post it online. We’re currently using three raised beds, and one patch of dug garden (for potoates). Here’s how we’ve split things
We’ ve decided to plant the following (all from seed)
- French Beans*
- Oregon Sugar Pod
- Pea Early Onward
- Spinach*
- Rocket*
- Broccoli Autumn Spear
- Cauliflower All The Year Round
- Courgette*
- Turnip Atlantic Speedy
- Swede Ruby
- Lettuce Lobjoits Green
- Lettuce Little Gem
- Radish Mixed
- Squash F1 Butternut Barbara
- Cabbage (Savoy) F1 Traviata
- Parsnips*
- Onion (Salad) North Holland Blood Red
Onion (Salad) Shimonita - Carrot F1 Purple Haze
Carrot F1 Maestro - Onions*
The items marked with a * are being donated from my colleague Sean Johnson
We’re also planning on growing some pumpkin (Pumpkin F1 Becky) in an old patch of ground at the bottom of the garden next to our potato bed. No doubt I’ll add some images when everything arrives and we get the first seedlings potted up
