Saturday 18 June 2011

Winter

It's strange to think that on a lovely, sunny June day the topic on my mind is the hard months of winter.

We're going to have a go at growing a range of brasicas including cabbage, brocolli and purple sprouting to name a few of the seed varieties we bought at Gardener's World.
We also need to get a move on with some of the root crops including parsnips and turnips, otherwise we really will have missed them for this year...

Don't worry, we're not only confined to the doom and gloom of the 'hunger months' but we are still preparing and sowing for summer and early through to mid autumn.

I transfered the lettuce seedlings in to the ground directly next to the leeks and then  planted a row of beetroot too. The beetroot looks great, it's been sat in a pot up until now and they have come on great in the short time we've had the greenhouse. Amy doens't like beetroot, so it's only done a small row for myself. We can plant a row of lettuce each week now for a few weeks time so that we have a continuous crop in to the autumn.

The broad beans look really good, seeing as we only bought 12 plug plants that were a bit battered and starved and thus reduced at a local garden centre, we are both amazed how well they have come on. They are all flowering and we watched the bees hard at work on them. I noticed the first mange tout flowers today aswell which is fantastic. Here are a couple of pictures of the bees doing their business..



There are plenty of tomato flowers on the tomato plants, and the first sign on peppers on the pepper plants. It was great to have Amy back in the garden now she has finally finished her own exams. She helped me move the sunflowers on to larger pots, and they will be moved over to my Grandma and Grandad's house next week or just after. We are keeping a few for our own garden and I plan to save the seeds. She also got her infamous pink watering can out and gave all the plants a little sprinkle this evening. Everything seems to be thriving, even the scorched runner beans are coming along really well...

Have a good day!

Martin

2 comments:

  1. Very envious of you going to GW show - it looked such fun on telly last night! Sounds like it's all go in your garden - same here, such a lot to be done! Tell Amy that beetroot can be used in chocolate cake (a bit hit with the Aussies) and it's lovely served with a dollop of cream! Loads of recipes on the internet or check out 'beetroot' on my blog. Caro xx

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  2. Your broad bean flowers are looking good - the bee is super cute! It sounds like everything is going well! Good plan thinking about sowing winter/spring veg - I need to get some spring cabbage sown soon. Very jealous of you tomato flowers...still a little while longer until any appear here! Philippa

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