veg beds » Small Plot, Big Ideas

The end of year garden clean up

General Gardening, Livestock, Plans / Preparation No Responses »

Jan 012013

The weather has been kind around the end of December and so we managed a good couple of days work in the garden to end the year – to my untrained eyes at least it makes quite a noticeable difference. After all the wet weather and the lack of any decent chance recently for things to dry out I wasn’t sure when we started that anything constructive could be done though.

Luckily a little bit of weed control fabric and some strategically placed cloches seem to help bring things together on the veg beds at least. We are already starting to see some shoots coming through which I guess must be the snowdrops so I need to keep the chickens off those flower beds if I want to see them grow!

Raised veg bed with plastic cloche

Now that the leeks are all harvested and eaten all 3 veg beds are now tucked up for a couple of months while I try to decide what to do next year.

Raised veg bed with weed control fabric

And chickens really enjoy it when you dig over the compost heap, in this case I was redistributing the contents of the current compost heap and adding a little of the contents from an older heap to liven things up. I can’t help thinking that the chickens will have cleaned out any worms that I managed to transfer though so maybe the effort was wasted.

Chickens love a good compost heap

What to try in 2013?

We are still hoping to sell the house in the early part of this year so there aren’t any major plans for the veg beds but I can’t just leave them empty. Maybe a quick peek in the seed catalogues and some fancy planning with a calendar will throw up some ideas for vegetables that are happy with early planting and give a quick harvest? Of course there are always a few pots of various sizes dotted around which I could plant up and then if necessary take with us when we move so maybe all is not lost!

I’d better get off to study the catalogues and vegetable books but any suggestions or past experiences would be most appreciated…

Real life can slow you down

Plans / Preparation No Responses »

Jun 222012

There haven’t been enough updates lately mostly due to a change of job, preparations for a wedding (No.2 daughter) and at times some atrocious weather! However that will soon change now that normality is slowly returning and other plans can start to move forward.

New job in easy commuting distance

After 2 weeks in the new job things are beginning to settle into a new routine rather than with the old job which involved travelling away quite a bit. There is also the added benefit that the garden and veg beds can get some attention after work.

Unfortunately in the last 2 weeks the weather has veered wildly between two extremes with some lovely sunny days but plenty of grey, damp, miserable ones too.

The big wedding day

The impending wedding is now only a week away and should be a great event over a couple of days. However this also means that the whole thing will all be over by the end of next weekend and our lives can move on to other things.

Smallholding plans

In particular I’m impatient to get some progress with the house sale and the other general changes needed to get us closer to the smallholding idea. There has been some slow and careful progress with our future plans but we are still not completely clear on the best way forward or how much can sensibly be achieved

First things first

This weekend I need to get a few hours in the garden to assess the progress with the veg beds because the potatoes are starting to show signs of flowers. According to my information this is quite a crucial phase and it won’t be long before I can check the results. Initial checks on a plant which had suffered some damage shows a poor yield but maybe it’s too early to tell?

I also need to take a closer look at the chickens because one of them has occasionally laid a “rubbery” egg recently and is looking a little off-colour. However these phases only last a few days before she apparently returns to normal for a week or so – It’s time to study some more chicken books and ask around on the various forums.

Keeping on top of the Spring jobs

General Gardening, Plans / Preparation, Seeds / Plants No Responses »

Apr 202012

After another extended time away from home on business I know that there will be plenty of tasks waiting for me on my return. All of these will be in addition to the usual concerns about the contents of the vegetable beds and how they have coped in my absence.

Here is a brief run-down…

Vegetable beds

After the range of planting that I did a couple of weeks ago I’m hoping to see signs of progress from some if not all of them.

The seed potatoes have been under cloches so they should have been well protected from any frosts recently. Unfortunately the cloches will also have kept the rain off too so I;ll need to check that.

It is much the same for the carrot seedlings I planted out but these are a fast growing variety so I suspect I will see more progress with those.

The onion sets got planted out in a bit of a rush and as a result all I had left to cover them was some netting. Hopefully even that has been some help to keep the worst of the weather off them while they get established.

Planting Out

By this time the French Marigold seedlings will probably be a little too big for their current home and desperate to get out into the real world.

I have great hopes for these mainly for the companion planting benefits however they are also one of the few plants that I am growing from seed this year specifically just for the flowers. Unfortunately I don’t have such high hopes for success with the old poppy and foxglove seeds which I sowed after finding them in a corner of the garage.

The leek seedlings in toilet roll tubes seem to have taken ages but I suspect that is down to my impatience more than any inherent weakness on their part. If my calculations are correct then the first batch should be about ready for planting out. I just hope I left enough room for them when planting out the carrots a few weeks ago but if not then some leeks will just have to suffer a temporary home until the (early harvesting) carrots have gone.

Construction work

The work to reroute the guttering on the garage was completed (fairly roughly) last time but I need to adjust the slope to get a proper flow and finish off the supports as well.

Of course I still need to get the water-butt to use with this but that’s just a minor detail really! It’s just a shame that I’ve missed an opportunity with all the wet weather at home over the last 2 weeks. Never mind I’m fairly confident that the North East of England is not likely to suffer a drought just yet.

Rearranging things

There are always plenty of other (non-vegetable) jobs to get done though and one of them will to rearrange some other plants that have managed to spread their way around the garden.

As usual we have a lot of self seeded Campanula and they will mostly be left where they are this year. However I will clear out some of them in an effort to create the illusion of a few select areas rather than having them all over the whole garden.

I think the time has come to leave the Bluebells alone after many years of removing them from certain areas. This year I got the impression that they looked a little more under control so I think they deserve to break.

It may not be the right time but I think we have a Philadelphus in need of some tidying up. There was an ill-advised attempt at pruning a couple of years ago which didn’t go well – no names of course but it wasn’t me!

If I remember I may add a post with a picture of the Bay tree before I tackle it as we have left this for many years now. What used to a be a fairly well-trimmed but large standard-style tree is now getting out of control and needs a firm disciplinary hand.

At this point I should make it clear that I’m no expert with plant names but I always use these names for the plants in question so if I’m wrong then at least I’m consistent!

Planting update

Seeds / Plants No Responses »

Apr 102012

What a busy bank holiday weekend that turned out to be. Thankfully the weather was kind and I was able to finish just about everything on my list. It’s good to see the new raised veg beds getting some use finally and all the effort getting to this point seems worth it at the moment.

The potatoes are now in the ground – there are only two fairly short rows but I have limited space for the moment so I am only able to put in a little bit of everything.

I’ve left a cloche over them for the moment as the weather forecast for the coming week seemed to be predicting some pretty cold nights. As we are near the coast any colder nights may not be a huge problem but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Trust me though, there are definitely two rows of potatoes under that plastic in the picture and hopefully I have planted them far enough apart unless my measuring went wrong!

The carrots have also been planted out now and they were kept in the toilet roll tubes which made planting a really simple task. I have also recently come across this old page on the web which claims that this approach helps to prevent pest problems too!

They might have been just a little too small to plant out but I figured that as they should really have been planted directly into the veg beds in the first place then this won’t matter too much. By using the toilet roll tubes and leaving a cloche over them I think I’ve covered my bases fairly well.

Unfortunately the leek seedlings are just not quite ready for planting out as they are still only about 3 inches high and pretty thin, I would say weedy but that’s unfair to my leeks.

However this minor delay is probably not a bad thing because the weather has still not warmed up properly here in the North East of England.

It doesn’t seem to be affecting my garlic though because that is making great progress. I planted 3 cloves in this small terracotta trough (as well as in other locations) and they are already coming up strongly.

The bluebells in this picture look good as well!

Update on the raised beds

Plans / Preparation No Responses »

Feb 262012

Raised veg bed with cabbages

Here are a couple of quick pictures as an update on the raised beds I added over the winter. To my inexperienced eye they look pretty impressive but then what do I know!
Last autumn I planted a few cabbage seedlings out (an impulse buy at B&Q) but they haven’t done a lot so far… At least the wood chip path along one side is looking nice and the bluebells which are everywhere should add a nice bit of colour eventually.

The other raised bed just next door is also looking good and when I took this picture the plan was to keep it covered for a while to keep it protected from any cold weather. I soon realised that the forecast is looking good for this week so I might as well leave it uncovered and get some rain on it!

Covered raised veg bed

The weekend beckons and the garden is calling…

General Gardening No Responses »

Feb 232012

I have big plans for activity on the vegetable growing this weekend so there should be much progress to report next week. For the moment I have posted a page of advice on growing potatoes which contains most of the knowledge I have gathered from various websites, blogs and vegetable growing books.

This will be updated with any additional potato advice that I find and also with further details of my own experiences with growing Charlotte potatoes in a new vegetable bed I’ve started using.

With luck I should be able to plant a lot of my leek seeds in my home-made seed trays using cardboard tubes from toilet rolls. I may even experiment a little bit by filling them with different types of compost.

I also hope to fix my wheelbarrow which has had a flat tyre for ages and my initial attempts at repairs last year using a new inner tube were less than successful. I may end up cutting my losses though and just buy a new one – I can always place the old barrow at the end of the garden and use it as a new raised bed