Spring planting
It’s good to be green…
It’s that time of year again where we all realise we should have planted our seeds for vegetables at least a month ago and leaves us to think whether we have left it too late for this year. The news is good; you are not too late if you get a wriggle on!
- Image via Wikipedia
I am guilty of not planting a single seed as yet and I still have a greenhouse to prepare and pots to replant let alone decide on what I plan to grow. This weekend I am going to pull out my green fingers and make a start. I am starting my tomatoes and runner beans in trays which I can put on the windowsill at work as I do not have space for them at home. By the time they sprout everything will be ready in the greenhouse (I hope).
This year I am keeping it simple as I will not have as much time to spend as I have in previous years. With the two raised beds either side in the greenhouse I plan to have “cut and come again” greens on one side with tomatoes and chilli’s on the other. My “cut and come again” greens are generally a mix of spinach, various types of lettuce and some mixed salad leaves. To plant I scrap back the top layer of soil, sprinkle a mix of the seeds, cover back up with the soil and water. I know I supposed to thin out as seedlings but it is far more fun just to see what grows and cut what I need, when I need it and my grandsons are far more likely to eat what they help Nana get from the garden rather than just putting a plate of green leaves in front of them! I find that as long as you sprinkle liberally all over the area, any weak plants die off quickly anyway and if you crop regularly, you get fresh new growth within days and it lasts all summer long.
Spinach is a great plant as when the frosts come and kill everything off, spinach will continue to grow and I have some that have made it through snow, hailstones and being trodden on when one of my dogs decides to investigate the greenhouse behind my back because I have been daft enough to leave the door open! Runner beans I plant around the edges on both sides so all plants get plenty of light.
On the other side I plant my tomato seedlings about 8 inches apart, in rows again with runner beans around the edges. I randomly place chilli seedlings anywhere I have space and yes it is crowded but it does work! Having tried strawberries and cherry tomatoes in hanging baskets and getting a very small yield I am at a bit of a loss as to what to grow in them but if all else fails I will fill them with herbs as there is nothing better than fresh as opposed to dried.
Thanks to a bucket with a sealed lid in the kitchen (stops the smell and flies until you empty onto your compost heap) I have managed to put all the vegetable waste over the winter into a plastic dustbin (very cheap from DIY stores) and as this takes about a year to decompose, I will be using last years compost this year. My local stables has also provided me with as much manure as I require free of charge but it is worth noting if you are using manure, you will need to keep an eye out for weeds as whatever the horse eats will come out the other end!
I have set up a simple guttering system around the outside edge of the greenhouse to collect rainwater which I will use for watering as dragging the hose across the garden is quite frankly a pain for me. As when transporting the greenhouse originally (recycled from a friends garden) we managed to break most of the glass, I have now replaced the glass with see through plastic sheeting which is far safer with kids and animals in the household. It does not seem to make any difference to the growing season and as long as it is sealed into the frames and seems to be doing a rather good job.
Finally I am hoping to try growing carrots in an old pair of wellington boots with the help of my grandsons as I want them to understand how vegetables end up on their plate and to encourage healthy eating. This way they can be directly involved in growing and I can move the boots out of the way when necessary.
All in all it looks like it is going to be a good summer. What are your plans for your garden?
Take Care People
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=a8ee0125-2c39-4acb-9276-16dfce79c9ae)
About Special GuestBirds on the Blog welcomes Guest Bloggers of all abilities, if you have something to say and you wish to share it with us - get in touch
View all posts by Special Guest →
6 Responses to Spring planting
All that jazz – All in A Day
Review of: Cousin Alice Jazz Music by Cousin Alice: Elaine Sturgess Reviewed by: Elaine Sturgess Rating: 5 On January 21, 2012 Last modified: January 30, 2012 Summary: What makes Alice so distinctive is her wonderfully smokey voice, a quality that furniture designer William Yeoward found so arresting at a concert she was performing for the [...]
Sounds brilliant, Angie – will you let us see photos of progress every now and again?
Our garden is the size of a postage stamp and totally dominated by a willow tree. That, and the fact it's a cut through for local foxes, make a wonderful excuse (along with bone idleness, ignorance and total lack of enthusiasm) for my contribution to au naturel rather than House & Garden…
I did do a whole load of digging when we first moved in many years ago – and when I say digging, I mean deep enough to discover an old bath under the ground… However, when himself decided on the look and feel of what would subsequently go in all that tilled earth (mainly by my toil) I said: “It's all yours” and it has been ever since…
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
Linda,
Have you considered growing cherry tomato's or strawberries in hanging baskets? Cheap, easy and no effort required apart from water. Try spinach around the trunk of your willow tree (unless really dark) as I have found that it is a very hardy plant. Best of luck and thanks for your comments.
Angie
Twitter: Angiewelly1
Last year we planted all sorts of veggies, some of which no-one here even likes – crazy! This year I'm keeping it down to herbs which I use in cooking all the time, lettuce, rocket, etc for salads, bell peppers which I have started from seed and are now about 10 cms high, and the alpine strawberries which are absolutely everywhere (couldn't get rid of them completely if I tried.) All container based, combined with impatiens and lobelia which I also grow from seed – the impatiens seeds are from last year's plants, kept dry through the winter.
I did have a wormery up until last year but have let it go as our council now provides us with caddies for leftover food including meat and fish scraps; these get reprocessed to make animal feed, I think. I only use organic fertiliser and the best I find is the dirty water when one of the lads cleans out his tropical (freshwater) fish tank…fish poo is not the most appetising thought, but it works a treat.
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
Oh thanks for this….I am way behind this year too, plus I have an allotment still to dig over!
I’m now collected “used” water cups from work and using these to sow my runner beans, french beans and sweet peas! My spuds are chitted and ready to go in…so my plan is for today, whilst it’s not raining, to get up to the lotty and just dig trenches for the spuds and get them in
I’m re-using last years potato soil – I grew them in bags last year.
Love it!
Angie, regarding your hanging baskets, I've planted lots of cut and come again salad stuff in mine this year. I don't know if it'll work but I've successfully grown little gem lettuces in not much bigger containers in the past, so I live in hope!
I have part shares in an allotment, so I grow a lot of the bigger stuff over there. Even so I still end up planting lots of stuff in pots in the garden. Apart from all my herbs, I've currently got rhubarb in a big pot – I harvested the first of it last night and we had rhubarb and banana crumble for pudding. I'm also waiting to see if my tubs of carrots and peas germinate. I'm trying to grow peas on the allotment, but as I eat them straight from the pod, I figure you can never plant too many! Finally I have a strawberry planter and dwarf apple tree in a pot which at the moment is absolutely covered in blossom, which is a good sign!
I have been focused on vermiculture for a while to make my own compost. I have started with leafy vegetables, like lettuce and red bell peppers. How did you setup the gutter to water your plants? I have recently replaced my gutter with vinyl Easy Flow, I wonder if the same could be done with it.