Just Keep Moving, Just Keep Moving, Just Keep Moving...

The title of this post is what I have been singing in my head all of last week into this, why? Because life's pace of late has been mental, some how I have filled my time with numerous projects and if I don't sing that song in my head I might feel like I have lost the plot and throw in the towel.

But really life is good and I have my health and my family are all well and accounted for, so no more moaning, I have to JUST KEEP MOVING...

So what did I get up too last week in the garden, I will let the pictures tell the story...

Tuesday 13/04/2010

The Tulips are still enjoying the April spring sunshine.



The Hyacinths blooms are properly open.

A hybrid Wood Anemone, blooms for the first time from some free bulbs I got last year.

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On the left is Heartease which has flowers throughout out the winter into this year and has a fresh batch of blooms on it. And on the right are the first of the wild Violas in my garden to flower (its really weird, my wild violas always flower weeks later than my surrounding neighbours, who also have wild violas in their gardens).

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On the left are the blooms of the wild strawberry plants in my garden and on the right is the waterlily that lives in a deep bucket (yes I know, I know, I need to finish the big pond, hopefully this year) slowly coming to life.

Time to give the lawn it's first hair cut.

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I got quite a bit of lawn clippings so I removed some of the wood material from the compost bin which I added last week when I tidied the flower beds and layered the clippings properly with the dryer materials, resulting in a full bin.

Saw lots of mini beast while cutting the lawn.

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Picture upper left of a broken bird's egg, shows the birds are not dragging their feet re: nesting, wasp in the middle picture and a lacewing in the bottom picture, which is very encouraging to see so early in the season as their young gobble up the nasty plant sucking aphids which plague us gardeners.

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I also took a peek into the ponds again and was pleasantly surprised to see a small clump of frog spawn, aww, so the frogs hadn't turned their noses up to my filthy pond/s after all, oh bother, now I'll have to clean it without jeopardising the spawn, see what you get when you procrastinate, that teaches me, doesn't it!!!


To end the day I was lucky to find some descent parsnips to pull and some almost to far gone purple sprouting broccoli, which I baked together with the 'Celebration' winter squash from storage. The parsnips center was woody but was easily removed while preparing for the roasting pan and there was still enough root left to enjoy.

Winter Squash: Celebration

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This is a bush variety and as such doesn't take up much room when it is growing (approx the same amount of space as a courgette plant). The flesh was a little dry but this maybe due to the long time in storage. It was not overly sweet but the flesh was dense and starchy, roasted beautifully, tasted great with the other veges, I will grow again, and hope for more than one squash from the plant.

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Thursday 15/04/2010

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Another lovely sunny spring day and some tulip blooms which I accidentally cut down when I was tidying the flower beds last weekend are opening.

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The Peacock butterflies are still about.

Its time to clean the pond and above are two of the three froggy inhabitants I disturbed while doing the task. the small clump of spawn was it seems only the tip of the iceberg and there proved to be not one but two large clumps of spawn in the pond, which made cleaning the pond even trickier.

Here is the pond all cleaned of old leaves and some excess winter sludge. I choose not to change the water and simply topped up with fresh rain water from the butts, I also tidied up the plants in the boggy perimeter of all their old dead and woody foliage.

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Saturday 17/04/2010

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I worked on preparing the legume bed for sowing seeds direct, there is a trellis for peas, four wigwams; 3 for french beans and 1 for borlotto beans, and behind the wigwams on the right is a A frame for my runner beans. This was my set up last year but in another 'L' shaped bed, which worked well so I'll be repeating it this year.

To prepare the bed I dug in three buckets of well rotted compost and three buckets of well rotted spent rabbit bedding and dropping based compost. If you remember from my posting on the tidying of the flower beds , I showed you a picture of the compost bin having a huge mushroom pile in the cooked compost side. Well the pictures above are what I found when I dug into the compost, it is well laced with the fungi's 'root' system, which I hope will continue to thrive in the vege beds and lend theirselves to a beneficial root symbiosis with my vege plants, which should lead to a better uptake of water and nutrients by the vege plants, you can read up more on this sort of thing here, have you ever noticed sometimes when you pull up a weed like dandelion or even a dense growing grass that the roots and surrounding soil has a coating of white stuff, well that most likely is fungal growth in a symbiotic relationship with the plant you have just dug up. OK science lesson over, I will leave you to research the topic further if you wish.

Here are some other mini beast I saw on Saturday...

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More Ladybugs.

And I finally caught a bumblebee on camera.

Sunday 18/04/2010

Hubby wanted me to go to the cinema with him but I wanted to get some tasks done at the allotment, so I gave him a choice of helping me at the plot for a couple of hours so I could get my jobs for the day done quickly then accompany him to the cinema or go alone.

Hee! Hee! guess what he choose.

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I first got him to loosen the soil in the bed in the picture on the left which was part of a foot path and as the weather warms up and as there has been no rain in the last couple weeks the soil is starting to set like concrete. Once the soil was loosened I set to weeding while I gave him the task of digging in some manure into the bed you can see him digging pictured above which is for the brassicus.

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By golly I don't know why he won't come out in the garden or the plot more often, he got both jobs done so quickely he was even able to weed out the main central footpath.

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So with the smaller bed weeded, I watered the emerging beetroot and carrot seedlings, and we cycled back home, I would have loved to also sown the parsnip seeds but I had other tasks at home to get done before going to see the show, so I'll sow those later this week.

PS. I have updated my other blog, check it out if you would like to catch up on what else has been demanding my time.

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And I know I have been quiet on the blog reading front (but if I don't limit my computer time I won't get anything done). I will play catch up and read and comment on all my blogs I like to follow as the week progresses.

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Late April Showers

Well we have had more or less a wet week, with a return to rainy weather. The garden will look all the better for it as it hasn't had a good continuous soak for a while. This year I'm trying out the theory of not watering plants to often once they are established. The theory is once the plants have set their roots into the soil if you keep watering they grow their roots shallow near the surface moisture which drys out quicker due to evaporation and thus they suffer more from wilting, etc but if you don't water after they have established themselves then the grow their roots deep into the soil seeking moisture where it's level remains more or less constant.

So far it appears to be working except for one watering session after my return over the Easter break I haven't watered any further and the young plants are not worse off at all if anything they are growing very well, even though the weather has been very hot and dry.

Check out the progress of some of the young plants I planted out over the 3rd and 4th of April in the next set of pictures:

Mangetout Peas.

Lettuces.

Turnips, and there is even one forming (not sure if this is early or normal as I have never grown turnips before).

Mizuna and Pak Choi.

Perpetual Spinach.

Saturday no gardening done today had other commitments but I had to take stock of my melon plants properly and soon realised that the damaged leaves on one of the plants which i initially assumed was sun scorching is not. It appears that it maybe a fungal infection of some sort. I posted a question on the forum I belong too Allotment 4 All but with no real outcome on which infection it is and how to deal with the plants. Here is the link to the question where I posted photos and descriptions of the symptoms: http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,51095.0.html

The chard have begun to germinate and the early purple sprouting broccoli began germinating on Friday.

Sunday I finally got round to pricking out the amaranth, romenesco, kale and cauliflower seedlings. I also potted up two of the cucumber seedlings and the basil seedlings that are in the conservatory. It was very hot work in the greenhouse as the sun was beating down, the only way I was able to stay out and get it done was by draping an old tea cloth on the glass roof over the area I was standing. I will definitely get myself some old white chiffon type curtains to drape over the greenhouse this summer to create a little light shade which will help to stop the plants that will be grown in there from becoming sun scorched.

I noticed that the loosethrift which were sown way back early March have finally started to germinate. They were sown on the surface of the compost in a pot which was left to stand in water like was advised in my main herbal book and many times this month I was tempted to throw the lot out but decided to simply keep topping up the water and wait. As they say patience is a virtue.

Monday while the rain was coming down I sprinkled some lawn seed in the weeded bare patches and with all the continued wet weather there should be a good germination rate.

I have decide since its too wet to do outside gardening I'm going to tackle my sick melon plant problem (there appear to be two infected melon plants and I think my lovely looking luffa (torsha) plant may be infected as well. Some research on the net mentioned that seaweed folia sprays not only feeds the plants helping them to fight infections but is also a mild fungicide. So I first removed all the diseased plant material and with the most infected plant the top inch of soil was also removed and discarded and fresh amount was added (after each use of the knife I cleaned the blade with methylated spirits to prevent transfer of any infection from one plant to the next and if touched any of the infected tissue I also disinfected my gloves which I had on).The cut leaf stalks were also sealed immediately with wax after cutting to reduce the risk of fungal spores getting easy access to living tissue.

After all the prep work was done I then sprayed both infected plants and non affected plants with the seaweed folia spray. These were the melons, torsha and cucumber seedlings.

Cutting and discarding of infected tissue and soil.

Sealing stems with wax.

Spraying the plants with seaweed folia spray.

Here is the end result of the most infected plant after my attempt of treatment, its a wait and see now on if it recovers.

The khol rabi has begun to germinate.

Tuesday started off warmer with a sunny morning but ended with a wet afternoon. Didn't get round to any gardening as such but did go skip dipping and got a large half a barrel and some flower pots from someones rubbish they had out front ( and yes I did ask first). Later in the evening when I visited the A4A forum some members alerted the group to low temperature forecasts, so I checked the Met for my weather and found that the night time temp was to drop to approx 4 degrees so I went out with a torch and fleeced the tomatoes and curcubit plants as they don't like temps below 5 degrees. I also covered the outdoor container grown potatoes with sheets of plastic just in case there was any frost (the pictures were taken the following morning when I went to take them off).

Germination of the coriander has begun and the sunflowers that was sown by the girls.

Wednesday had much nicer weather with lots of warm sunshine. everything in the garden looks much better with last few days of rain and there is more forcasted for tomorrow.

I got round to sowing some beans today in root trainers (runner beans, purple podded french climbing beans and borlotti beans). At the moment they are in the conservatory but will be moved to the greenhouse as soon as they germinate, I soaked the seeds about fours hours prior to sowing so germination should be quicker.

I have noticed since the begining of the week that some of the leaves on some of the tomato and curcubit plants in the greenhouse have begun to turn yellow, so I watered them with an organic soluble fertiliser today and will do so weekly till they are planted into the ground.

There is also an update on the robin family. My neighbour noticed yesterday that there was no activity by the robins and today was equally quiet with also no sightings of the pair whatsoever, so he decided to take a peek in the nest (yes he knows this is normally advised against during the birds breeding season, especially if the nest was being used). Well he found two cold beautiful eggs and a lovely nest. the chicks appeared to have fledged when we weren't looking (the cheeky monkeys :) I really had hoped to see them fledge from the nest). We both suppose they are keeping themselves well hidden in my neighbours hedge/ shrubbery and most likely their parents are with them. Maybe in a few days we'll see them when they begin to explore their parents territory.

The peacock butterfly was seen again today along with a large cabbage white who I disturbed while it was feeding on the strawberry flowers (note to self: time to start constructing a netted cover for the brassicus bed which already has my pak choi and mizuna in it).

Thursday today, well the weather is not sure what it wants to do, one minute its cloudy and drizzly next its sunny and bright, there is some wind as well, so we'll see how the day pans out.

Well you'd never guess the collard doves are back at it again. Since their egg's sad demise last Thursday there was no sign of them in the garden or in the surrounding trees at all. That is till this morning when they were back picking up the fallen twigs from their first attempt at nest building, they were taking the twigs into the apple tree to repair or should that be reinforce the 'mess of twigs' aka nest?? Maybe they will be more successful this time but in all honesty I won't be holding my breath.

Since we are on the topic of birds I thought I would share with you the bird song I heard today on my walk home through the woods after I dropped my older daughter to school. This morning they sounded almost tropical, made me feel like I was back in Trinidad :(

The day's weather stayed fine with no more showers occurring so I got the chance to finish filling the last bean trench with kitchen waste and the soil was replaced on top. After raking it level I erected the runner beans support and one wigwam for french beans.

I didn't plan to grow any dwarf french beans this year but theses seeds of the yin yang bean are so pretty I couldn't resist buying the packet, so I sowed some today, to plant out with the tomato plants . These won't be harvested till the pods are dry to store the beans for winter use.

Though I have been harvesting crops all spring from 2008 plants, today I had my first harvest from a 2009 sowing, radishes. I am also still harvesting my 2008 perpetual spinach though this won't last much longer as the plants have started to go to seed, the leaves are still lovely and tender though especially with this weeks rain. In the picture are the fresh cuttings of the oregano, chives and last years sown parsley.

On the gemination front, the nasturtiums and sweet peas the girls sowed a couple of weeks ago have finally started to grow. The yukon is also finally pushing its shoots out of the soil.