We had no time or space to grow from seed last year and so bought in a few plug plants from one of the main proprietary seed companies. By the time we were ready to plant the very first plants, it was already the end of September.
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| Autumn planted (?) Broad Beans in flower already |
We tried a few spring collections of plants but somehow managed to get the labeling wrong in the haste to get planted resulting in thinking what were cabbages gone to seed and bolting turning into pretty good purple sprouting broccoli. Mind you this was before me asking the Commis Chef to try to salvage what what left of such a 'cabbage' and getting the reply that the leaves didn't really look or taste cabbagy and so was thrown out after an attempt at cooking it.
Lesson 2: Label, label and label again.
Lesson 3: Variety plant collections from on-line growers are a good option for smaller plots but you get far too many plants and have to give or throw more than half away. You also get alot of what you won't want or use. If only they'd do smaller quantities!
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| Is it a bird, is it a plane? It sure isn't a January King cabbage |
We also tried a collection of Chinese leaf plants which included Pak Choi Ivory. This is normally planted in August and harvested through to December and this proved the case. It was quite a success as it grew really quickly. The other Chinese plants proved less than useful in our cooking needs but grew pretty well, all things considered.. Chinese plants seem to grow very quickly as we're seeing from the seed sown Chinese cabbage Wa Wa Sa this year.
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| Chinese cabbage Wa Wa Sa seed sown directly into the bed no more than a month ago and leaping off to growth |
The brassica 'collection' from last year had varied results but was far too late going in to give it the best chance. January King cabbage just didn't have the right time to mature and needed to be planted in August rather than the end of of September as we did. The same applied to a savoy cabbage named Wintessa.
The cauliflower Alpen did, to it's credit, give small heads but these were not as tight as you'd want and therefore just a half failure, half success given the late time of planting. Even the best grower can have some years where cauliflowers won't head up at all so I guess we didn't do too bad.
The main problem in all this was that we received 16 plant plugs of each of 4 brassica giving us far more than anyone would need for our size of plot. They were about £10 as a collection and so were too tempting not to buy. As we're now up and running growing from seed we'll rely on our own choices of plant and especially plant the number we need for this year.
Not everyone has the space, facility or desire to grow from seed so plug plants are a great option, especially now with the grafted options available. Growing from seed is cheaper and very rewarding though.
Not everyone has the space, facility or desire to grow from seed so plug plants are a great option, especially now with the grafted options available. Growing from seed is cheaper and very rewarding though.
A packet of seed, some good compost and a greenhouse fitted with a decent propagator and it is tempting to sow dozens of seeds of EVERYTHING. This only results in mass frustration over where to put them all unless you have a massive greenhouse.
Tip: Little is more just has to be the golden rule.
Tip: Little is more just has to be the golden rule.
One great success, despite being planted out late, has been the cabbage Excel.
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| Cabbage Excel |
This was one of the four in the brassic collection and produces good pointed hearts or can be used earlier as 'leafy greens'. Harvest November through to May so as it's only mid April and the plants are ready to use I am the proverbial piggy in the wotsit right now.
Despite the fact we have 9,426,498 pigeons in the trees surrounding our garden who will, trust me, devour young brassica plants in no time, especially during colder months when looking for food, they didn't touch these.
The Excel cabbage plants were the only one left unprotected by netting from the birds too. We grew half a dozen plants next to the Chinese collection so maybe, just maybe, there's something in that?
They have hearted up really, really well and subject to the Commis Chef letting me know it cooks well and tastes well, will be one of the few traditional cabbages we'll grow next year. I'm pretty much decided on growing red and white cabbage for pickling and for home made coleslaw and salads. Cabbages just take up alot of room and I think you need to find a variety and type you like to eat, is reliable to crop and gives consistent results. We're trying one called Greyhound this year from seed and we'll see how that goes.
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| Onions planted Autumn 2010 |
Again, I ordered far too many onion sets and ending up giving at least half to a neighbour who gave half of his half to a mate and so on and so on. The major on-line companies sell bags of onion sets far too big for most of our needs. This is where I wish I had an allotment and could do some 'trades' but hey.
In January I ordered some heat treated onion sets and forgot about them until the postman arriving literally as I write this post - i've now another three bags of onions and no-where to plant them.
Lesson 4: Keep a good track of what you are ordering during the winter months - a single order of various things can end up getting delivered in many lots ( to coincide with planting times which makes sense) and it is ridiculously easy to lose track.
We planted Onion Autumn Champion, the large Japanese variety Senshyu Yellow, Radar and Red Cross. These are in the original heavier soil and are going OK but not as good as those planted this spring in the improved soil mentioned in the earlier post. I used a proprietary onion fertiliser hand sown before planting and this spring gave them a boost of a seaweed soluble feed called Medwyns Seaweed Gold. It's not cheap but it perked up the plants after a few days and really got the brassica going too. http://www.medwynsofanglesey.co.uk/shop/SUNDRIES/Medwyns-Seaweed-Gold/prod_12.html
I'm very excited at the new products and discoveries now available that enable plants to maximise their uptake and use of nutrients and resist disease . The seaweed spray definitely showed results within days and using RootGrow on bare rooted plants and in root trainers seems to be very good indeed, although I can't compare it with not using it. We'll report over the coming weeks and months and see how we get on.
Nutrimate is another such product I'm trying. I am incorporating this as one of a number of 'ingredients' in special compost, of which much more later. I did warn you that I believe everything I read on the packet until I prove it otherwise.
Broad beans: We planted some plug plants in late September (in the original soil mix) - these were Broad Bean Aquadulce Claudia. With the very heavy snows this winter and extreme colds only a few survived and it's these, we think that are the ones in flower already.
Early this tear we grew some broad beans from seed, The Sutton Seeds from Marshalls ( http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/broad-bean-the-sutton-seeds-pid1910.html). These are a dwarf bean growing to no more than 45cms compared to the 100cms of Aquaduice so we'll be able to see which are which later in the season as they are in the same bed. We'll see how many of the overwintered plants survived and whether it was worth doing an autumn planting or not.
Certainly the Sutton Seeds beans are doing really well - we grew them in root trainers adding in a little RootGrow (http://www.rootgrow.co.uk/rootgrow_how.php) of which I am quickly becoming a a strong disciple, more of this in a later post.
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| Broad Bean - The Sutton Seeds' growing well |
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| Deliberately close planted beans to see how intensively we can grow in raised beds. Mildew can result from a lack of air flow around plants and I'll watch for this carefully. I'm happy they'll get enough feed though to sustain close planting. |
Strawberries: I had read that Strawberry plants actually need some cooler weather to allow flower bud formation. However, when the weather starts to dip below freezing at night, it's time to cover the plants. I didn't bother despite crazy sub zero temperatures this winter and they've survived perfectly well. They are quite well protected and so probably didn't suffer a wind chill as bad as they would if more exposed.
We planted a small variety of plants which eventually arrived mid January, in time to get some winter cold on them. We chose an early, mid and late variety:
- Marshmarvel - early
- Cambridge Favourite - main crop
- Amelia - Late crop
In all, we had 12 plants of each and half of these took up a complete bed. Despite the persistent efforts of our local black and white thug of a cat (or maybe the fox) digging into this bed above all others, they are in good shape and showing excellent new growth at the base.
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| The three varieties showing good new growth |
Again, I used a sprinkle RootGrow in the bottom of each planting hole.
As we had another dozen of so plants left over I made up my own strawberry planter. The rubbish that is available at garden centres and on-line should be banned, banished and the sellers sent to the Tower! They lead to heartache with people expecting a really good crop only to find out they don't hold water, are too small and, sorry to say, total crap.
I considered buying a large oak barrel which would be perfect and what would have been used in days of old but by the time I paid for it and then paid another £40 getting it sent it didn't make sense. We were making up cases for the Exhibition Carrots (more later) and so converted one into our own strawberry case. I'll post a separate post about this, and the carrot boxes later.
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| The 'home made' strawberry planter complete with good growing medium and watering pipes to get water down to the lower plants on each side |
Finally, we tried some late sowings of Lettuce All Year Round, a few radish and spring onions but it really was too late in the year and they didn't come to much but it was worth a go. A few plug plant lettuce's produced some results but again weren't really worth the effort.
Cherry tree: As a kid I had a friend who had the most amazing cherry tree in his front garden and this made him the most popular kid in school for weeks during the fruiting season. His Mum used to tell us we were only there for the cherries and she was absolutely right.
He used to let me ride his BSA Bantam 125 which was very cool and way faster than my Vespa 160. The Vespa was a far better pull with the girls for sure though but cherries and a BSA had their own attraction.
Cherries for me have a special memory (sorry, I'm grinning now)
This year I decided to grow a tree on dwarf rootstock in a raised bed about 1m x 1m backing onto the garage wall and in a complete sun trap. I'm going to train this into an espalier which looks pretty straight forward. I came across an excellent guide on training at http://www.realenglishfruit.co.uk/content/treetraining.htm
The main thing I learned here was not to bend the branches too early in the first year of the growth of the young tree. The sap has to be rising and only late in August would you bend the lower branches down to horizontal and tie into the wires.
The tree I bought is Cherry Stella from http://www.trees-online.co.uk/Stella-Cherry-Tree.html
Whilst not being the cheapest trees around, I wanted to buy from a specialist and one who could give me advice. The help I got was superb and the guy there spent as much time as we needed making sure he supplied exactly what he thought I'd need. I let him choose the tree and they even graft it onto dwarf stock for me as semi dwarf seemed the smallest option on their web site. I can't recommend them enough.
We also bought a small apple tree at the same time, explaining it was for the kids and grand kids really and he chose a Semi-Vigorous Rootstock MM106 (Bushdwarf stock (MM106) Cox's Self Fertile. This should bear fruit early October and store until January, if not all eaten before of course.
Both the cherry and apple trees won't need cross pollination thanks to this choice of trees and the advice given by Trees Online.
The next post will be the spring sowings and plantings.
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