I am feeling a bit foolish this week. I knew that the first potatoes we planted outdoors a few weeks ago had broken through the soil and I also knew that we were expecting some frost. What I failed to do was connect these two facts in my mind, so left the potatoes unprotected. Continue reading
This week saw a mixture of sowing and planting out. First, we prepared our second outdoor potato bed and planted a favourite late main crop Pink Fir Apple, along with more of second early Wilja and a few left over early Sharpe’s Express. The Wilja and Pink Fir Apple will go into the store once harvested, whilst this third sowing of Sharpe’s Express should keep us in new potatoes for some time. Continue reading
Chillies are one of my favourite things to grow and some years we have had an entire glasshouse filled with 44 chilli plants of various sorts. This year I have been a bit more restrained with only 20 plants. These were raised in heated propagators, which we turned off a couple of weeks ago, but left the plants in place. This week they were in perfect condition for moving into their final pots. The plants were looking healthy and their pots were filled with fine roots but not yet pot bound. Continue reading
It is not so long ago that I mentioned adding some feed to one of our bee colonies. We had three go into the winter and all survived the worst of the weather. One, though, was rather weak and had not put away enough stores to last the winter so we have been keeping an eye on it and making sure the bees do not run out of food. Continue reading
After a little less than two weeks, our first sowing of French beans had developed into robust plants ready for planting out. It is probably a month or so too early to plant these tender crops outdoors, even here in our sheltered southerly locale. It is, though, a good time to plant in the polytunnel, where they are well protected and will crop weeks ahead of those to be planted outdoors later in the season. We have both dwarf and climbing sorts, the latter planted against a series of vertical bamboo canes. The dwarfs will crop first but the climbing sorts will produce the larger crop over a longer period. Thus, planting both sorts serves to spread the harvest. Continue reading
This week we finished planting the first of our outdoor potato beds, laying out 18 tubers of second early Wilja. This is, for us, a fairly modern variety, bred in Holland in the 1970s. It crops and stores well and can be treated as an early main crop. Mid way between floury and waxy, Wilja is a versatile potato and a good choice if growing only one sort. We had already prepared the bed for the first earlies that went in a few weeks ago, so it was just a matter of digging holes with the trowel, dropping in the tubers, and covering over. We also took the last of the seed potatoes, which we had stored in the fridge to retard them, and put them to chit; these will go in the second potato bed in a few weeks’ time. Continue reading