A Symbiotic Relationship

Well I tell you if it wasn't for this blog I would not have done any gardening today (it doesn't help when the weather is gloomy) but the blog and the garden seems to have developed a symbiotic relationship, with both of them encouraging the progress of the other.

So on that note the tasks that I accomplished today were;

1. The planting out of my 1st early seed potatoes. 3 seed potatoes of the variety Foremost went into a large pot and 5 seed potatoes of the variety Colleen went into a grow sack. In tidying up the pots I found a dead potato plant, so I recycled the soil into a bag for later use and unearthed a small growing tuber of a main crop variety called Fir Apple. Normally the main crop spuds won't be planted till late march but since it was trying to grow already I stuck it in a medium size pot of fresh soil and we'll see if I get anything from it (maybe we'll get a meals worth). All the containers I used were left outside the greenhouse but once the leaves begin to show I would bring them under cover if late frosts are forecasted.

2. I also got some more seeds sown, a spring onions variety I grew last year called 'Deep Purple' (it produced spring onions that thought themselves to be actual onions with huge bulbs produced that stored well in situ where they were planted) and a red cabbage variety 'Kalibos' called were sown and left in the greenhouse. Some ochro was also sown and kept in the warm conservatory.


I have been scaling back the household's diet to a less processed one, not that we eat a large amount of process foods to begin with but a few months ago I started phasing out the tinned Beans that made up a large part of our diet and started to re-add to our diet dry peas which I have to prepare from scratch with a pressure cooker etc. Now this is how I preferred to cook anyway but picked up this bad habit of buying beans in tins a few years ago. Thankfully that is now under better control with only bake beans (I once found a baked bean recipe on-line, so watch this space if I find it again it will be bye bye) and the odd tin of corn (will be swapping to frozen very soon) being part of grocery list.

Another task today concerning our diet was to restart growing sprouts to add to our sandwiches and salads. Again I use to do this a lot about four years ago and dropped the habit out of laziness no doubt, well I have been promising to restart since last autumn when I unearthed the sprouting trays. So after washing them in the dishwasher this morning I sowed three types of seed - red cabbage, mustard and alphalfa.

Well that all I got up to today, the weather is forecasted to be bright and sunny tomorrow so I plan to get some more sowing done along with other things. I will fill you in on my progress when its all done.