Potato update

It would seem most likely that the the bigger plats on the left of the picture are the main crop Desiree and the smaller bright green ones are the early crop Rocket. Looking back in my archives I planted both lots on March 13th so almost exactly three months ago - Some people seem to say you can pull up your earlies after 12 weeks whatever and other say you wait for the plants to flower. They are much smaller than my main crop so I guess I better leave them in for a bit longer.

Net gains

After the success of the strawberry nets I put a large net over the raspberries which look to have a lot of fruit developing on them. A bit difficult to see in this picture but their are two posts with a wire between them and a large net over the whole thing which is held down with pegs.
So far it seems to have worked and today I just picked my first four raspberries and a few dozen more strawberries, sounds a lot but they're only small.

Also I have now thinned out my leeks and one row has now become one and a half rows. I bought a lovely dibber at the garden centre to help me replant them, although it made good holes they mostly filled in again when I watered the leeks back in, I hope my leeks won't be too full of mud. The courgette plants are getting bigger and bigger, there are flowers ready to bloom but they aren't ready just yet.

The parsnips seem to be doing really well, I gave that area a good weeding the other day and was surprised to find a few carrots growing as well, not many but I'll see what happens to them. The mixed salad is growing well as are the second radishes, I've already planted a row of third radishes for when they are ready.

I can't remember which are my earlies and which are the main crop potatoes, the two rows look different, one has much darker foliage, I'll have to see if I can find pictures of each variety and see which is which. They're fully recovered now from that late frost but they're not yet in flower.

When clearing out the ground by the compost bin I decided to lift the onions that had been on the plot when I first got it, they were still rather small but tasted delicious roasted with chicken last sunday.

Slim pickings

A bit of a gap in the harvesting since I planted the salad a bit late and I've already eaten all the first crop of radishes. The broad beans are beginning to pod now so I as my books suggest I pinched out the tops of the plants, this provided quite a lot of greens, I cooked half last night after washing with just a knob of butter, they do taste like beans with a spinichy sort of texture, unusual but nice.
The net is working on the strawberries, I only picked about a dozen but they're the first to ripen with out the fruit vanishing, all the other plants out of the net are without a single berry.

Also I made a few small cuts from the various herbs I have growing, none of the plants are that big yet but I think it's good to crop them carefully anyway to encourage new growth.
The intense heat yesterday had made the few remaining courgettes in the greenhouse wilt quite badly, I decided to plant them out and see what happens, a good drink perked them up a bit and I guess last nights rain must have helped as well. I also decided to plant out the kobocha the four plants that germinated are looking healthy and have a bout six leaves now, and I was worried about how hot it was getting in the greenhouse for them.

The fruit is beginning to form on the raspberries so I think I'll have to cover them as well soon if I'm going to be able to pick any. In a couple of weeks I hope to be eating those broad beans as well.

Mostly weeding

I seem to have spent the last two days mostly weeding, but I'm really happy with how it's all looking now. The down side to a fully weeded plot is that the weeds will grow back and I might have weeded out the turnips and carrots, I say might because I didn't see any but they've been in the ground ages now without any signs of germination.
Along the top of the plot where I planted the herb seeds I weeded very carefully, I found about enough parsley for a small garnish and what might be a bit of sage but couldn't see anything else. I mage a trip to the garden centre and bout some slightly larger herb plants, I now have tiny examples of parsley, sage, oregano, rosemary, thyme and lavender - I hope they settle in and grow a bit.
As you can see in the picture above I bought a net for some of the strawberries, it's three metres long but doesn't actually cover a whole row, I thought it was worth getting because the first strawberries that I had mysteriously seem to have disappeared.

The potatoes see to have made a full recovery from the frost now, with lots of healthy looking new growth.
The white sticks to the right of the spuds  in the picture mark out the artichokes just about all of which have germinated, who knows if I'll ever get any globes.

I planted a third of a row of radishes having picked the last of the first lot last week, this time I'm going to try and delay the crop so they aren't all ready at once. SimilarlyI planted a third of a row of lettuce and a third of a row of rocket, these were both from free seeds that I picked up at work. Other free seeds I got were for basil so I planted some in pots and put them in the greenhouse.

The french beans I in the greenhouse really needed planting out so I also got some bamboo canes from the garden centre and made a little wigwam for them, the wigwam has seven canes and I had eight plants but two were rather small so I planted them out on the same cane, lets see what happens.

The courgettes that I planted out are now looking a lot happier, when i first put them in the ground they all seemed to wilt a bit and some of their leave got a bit scorched where I'd watered them but now they have new growth, I still have five other plants in the greenhouse and along with the three kobocha I had another one has germinated, I'll be able to plant them out soon as well.
I also planted out ten of my savoy cabbages, they don't seem very cabbage like yet as they are rather long and stringy, at what point do they ball up? In the germination tray I have about three hundred, so I've thinned them right back and kept them in reserve if this first lot don't make it, they didn't seem to like being transplanted too much.

Hot stuff

What a difference a week makes. The temperature has been well into the 80's for the last couple of days with bags of sunshine to boot. I've been away for the last week in Ireland where it wasn't nearly so hot and dry. The picture above is an 'after' shot of the plot, where it's a little tidier than how I found it. I've had to spend a lot of time cutting down the grass that was growing on the plot edges and also dealing with all the weeds. On the old tool box you can see some of the radishes I've picked for my dinner, we had them in salad last night and tonight I'll be roasting them - I need to pick and eat them before they get too hard and woody, I wish I had staggered the planting a bit or put some more in the ground already.

Here are some of the trays from the greenhouse the front one has savoy cabbages in it and the next two have courgettes, I was worried they may have dried out while I was away but as you can see they are fine. The courgettes have mostly five or six leaves now so I've planted out two rows of them, eight plants in each row - the book I read said that three plants are enough to feed a whole family, I hope I haven't over done it? The cabbages need to be a bit bigger before I plant them out. Three of the kobocha seeds have germinated andI think at least one of the others might which would be good.

The broad beans are looking splendid and buzzing with bees (spot the bee), no sign of black fly either. There are strawberries beginning to swell and most exciting the artichokes have germinated. Today I planted some fennel and some mixed salad leaves that were free from the BBC. Although I wore a hat and had suncream on it seems I must have missed behind the ears, not too burnt, just a little red.

Frozen spuds

It's nearly the middle of May and the last thing I expected in central London was a frost. As you can see above my potatoes seem to have caught the worst of it, most of them now have black and shrivelled leaves.
Everything else seems to have escaped, the broad beans black and white flowers are now open on a few plants and the radishes are getting bigger every day. Despite the unseasonal cold it's actually been rather dry over the last week so I watered and weeded a bit as well this evening. In the greenhouse all was well, all the top layer seedling are doing very well but the lower level not quite as good, I think it lacks both light and heat on the bottom shelf. I've moved the kobocha pots up to the top as their is no sign of them germinating yet.

First harvest

The months of hard work have finally paid off with not one, but two lovely radishes! In fact I ate a few, some with the mud still on them. What I was really doing was thinning out my radish row, I couldn't resist eating a few of the larger ones and took the couple seen here home, after trying one Paul said it was the most succulent radish he'd eaten all year, they're actually quite peppery.
The weeds are running riot over the plot and I spent most time hoeing and pulling them up, it is quite satisfying to clear a patch of weeds but I know they'll soon spring up again before I next visit. While weeding I found about a half dozen more potato plants that have sprung up, they seem to be in quite random positions, they're mostly still rather small and I have just left them to be for now.
The broad beans seem to have done quite well over the last week, they're about 25-30cm tall now and are just beginning to produce buds, my neighbours beans which are in flower are almost twice the height but seem to be a different variety to mine, and they had planted theirs in the autumn.
During the week I made it down to the plot one evening and devised  a way to secure the shed roof a bit better. There were holes in the roof so I wound some wire through them and bought it back down the inside wall and attached it to the frame in three places, I hope this will help.
Inside the greenhouse germination has begun. In the picture below the two trays at the top back have courgettes in them, the front left are savoy cabbages and the right are runner beans, on the lower level there are some french beans that have also sprouted.