April 2007

Well, the potting shed is well underway now and we've been sowing seeds like crazy. The plot however has fallen behind schedule as I unfortunately both put my back out and managed to catch a pretty bad chest infection. I was off work for three weeks (day time TV really is so boring) and consequently not able to do too much.

We have managed to get the potatoes in but need to crack on now that I'm OK. I've bought myself a petrol stimmer to tidy up the very long grass paths and plot boundaries and can't wait to get everything ship shape. I just hate it when the plot looks scruffy.

We picked our first Asparagus and it tasted fantastic. It's growing really well but we need to resist temptation and not crop it too heavily this year. From next year I can see that we're going to get pounds of the stuff. It's well worth the wait.

We've planted up some Turks Turban as well as Butternut squashes this year. I can't believe how quickly the Turks Turban have come on. They seemed to sprout in no time at all and you can almost stand there and watch them grow! The Butternuts are a little slower to germinate but will soon catch up once they get going. They have a naturally longer growing season and will take most of the summer to produce and ripen the fruit.

We've also got tomatoes, sweetcorn, peppers, and a host of other little babies popping up their heads and chasing the sun. This month is a really exciting time. If you'd asked me a few years ago whether or not I would ever be this enthusiastic about planting a few dried up looking seeds I'd have would have denied ever wanting any involvement in such things. It just shows you how wrong you can be. There's something absolutely magical and amazingly satisfying about the whole process. I only wish I'd discovered it years ago. Still, better late than never.

I was sowing a whole bunch of herbs and salad leaves the other day, pots full of parsley, coriander and cut and come again salad grown as micro greens to eat very young and full of fantastic flavour. That's all incidental really; the point of the story is that I'd just re-filled the bird feeder in the cherry tree outside of the potting shed and had spilt some seed on the ground. So there I was, potting away, when a gorgeous male Blackbird landed no more than three feet away and began to devour the seeds. You just don't appreciate how beautiful this seemingly plain looking bird is until you see it that close. I wish I were a poet so that I might do it justice. Just stunning....

We are planting this month

Under cover:

Sweetcorn - Variety Lark F1 Hybrid

Plant single seeds in three inch pots and seal with a clear plastic bag. Sweetcorm needs light to germinate so place in a well lit area to get them going, I'll harden these off in the cold frame for a couple of weeks prior to planting out at the end of May. This variety is from the RHS Award of Merit Collection. If you're not sure which variety of any vegetable to grow, buying from this collection is a good bet as they have all been tested and judged pretty rigourously at one or more of the RHS gardens.

Cucumber - Variety F1 Burpless Tasty Green

This variety grows really well outdoors. I'll treat these in pretty much exactly the same way as the sweetcorn. I'll plant out at the end of May and support the cucumbers using a wigwam of canes. From four plants last year we had a huge crop and ended up giving more away than we ate! It was with this variety that I won the longest cucumber class at the allotment show last year.

Courgette - Variety Jemmer F1 Hybrid

We're back to sowing in three inch pots again here and will plant out from mid May. We've not grown courgettes before, mainly because I'm not a huge fan of this very popular vegatable. Sue adores them and so we've got to give then a go. This a golden variety which is supposed to be a heavy and very tasty cropper, again from the RHS Award of Merit Collection.

Sowing Direct:

Potatoes - Varieties Pentland Javelin, Desiree and Anya

Beetroot - Variety Wodan. I'll be planting these successionally throughout the summer.

Cut and come again salad leaves. Again, I'll be planting these successionally throughout the summer. This first lot I've sown under cloches to protect from frost (it's not too late).

Shallots - I've planted a couple of rows each of both the small round pickling and larger banana varieties.

Carrots - Variety Parmex

We've not grown this one before but this variety produces small, globe shaped roots that are supposed to be ideal for stony soil which we have in abundance! Best harvested when they reach the size of a golf ball, they can be planted succesionally between March and July. The literature says that you don't need to thin these as long as you harvest alternate plants when they are just big enough to eat, allowing the rest to grow on. That sounds a bit like thinning to me!

May