Milk bottle cloches

This is probably being a bit over protective, but with icy cold weather and snow predicted, I made some D-I-Y cloches out of old milk bottles the other night to protect my radish seedlings. I also put some newspaper down on the newly sown seed. Now my veg patch looks more like a rubbish tip, but it's better to be safe than sorry and I can probably reuse the cloches for starting other seeds.

Sowing

Had the day off work on Friday, so I took the opportunity to take some photos in the morning and sow my first seeds in the afternoon. Did a row of parsnips (white gem), a row of onions (half hystar, half red baron) and half a row of salad onions. I mixed radish seeds in with the parsnips and onions to act as row markers, because both take a long time to germinate and the radishes will be pulled before they're ready.


I used some seaweed fertiliser to prepare the seed bed, which I had raked over last weekend in preperation. For each row i used two sticks linked with string to mark it out and a trowel to make a 'drill' to plant in. I spaced the seeds out as it says in the book, using a tape measure to get the distances (maybe a bit odd, but I've worked as a surveyor and old habbits die hard!).

Can't wait to see my first shoots!

Dig for Victory!

Seeing as I'm living somewhere with a garden again, this year I've decided to grow my own veg. It'll be the first time since I experimented with tomatoes and runner beans while I was at school - so I don't really know what I'm doing! The plan is to grow lots of different things in the hope that some of them will survive the neglect that I'm sure I will be unwittingly guilty of.


I started off by digging up the lawn at the end my parent's garden on New Year's Eve, making two beds of about 12x3.5 foot. With the help of my girlfriend Rosie (who's planning on eating all the vegetables) I dug succesive trenchs about a spade deep and a foot wide, turning the earth over all the way along. We excavated lots of roots, stones and some may-bug grubs.


I took my Grandad as well as Mum's friend Jenny out to have a look. They both reckoned we've got good soil, so hopefully we'll get lotsa lovely vegetables! (As long as the bugs don't get 'em first)

The plan is to grow some:

Parsnips, New Potatoes, Carrots, Onions, Radishes, Beetroot Courgettes, Beans, Garlic, Broccoli, Tomatoes, Lettuce, Peppers and anything else there's room for - it's going to be quite a squeeze!

As my guide I'm using 'The Vegetable and Herb Expert', which has lots of useful info, as well as the BBC series 'Grow your own veg' which has good tips on organic vegetable growing. I shall record my progress on this blog with photos and news as I go so you can see how well (or badly) I do with the plot!