Freezing Saturday Afternoon

We spent the afternoon at the plot and it was oh so  bitterly cold.  Managed to get the greenhouse roof dismantled so that we can raise it a bit at the highest end.  It wasn't done right the first time and the rain would pond on the perspex which caused lots of leaks.

I'm a bit worried that with no roof the structure isn't stable so we will need to get the trusses on tomorrow or another high wind will flatten the whole thing.

I'm having a break from brambles this year and have been cutting them down slowly but surely, got another few metres done today.

Happy Burns Night.

We'll be having Haggis, Neeps and Rumbledethumps with a whisky sauce for dinner.  Yum, can't wait.

Onions

The onions that I sowed last week are all up and need to go somewhere cool.  The greenhouse roof isn't fixed yet so that is out.  For the time being they will live on the bathroom window ledge until I can find a cooler place for them.

Seed Sowing

Today I sowed...

Aubergine - Diamond
Chili - Early Jalapeno
Pepper - Pointy (saved from supermarket peppers)
Pepper - King of the North (green)
Pepper - Kaibi Round No2 (red)

I've never had any success with aubergines but there were 4 seeds left in a packet and I didn't have the heart to throw them away  so I put them in some compost and will have one last attempt at growing them.

The Sturon onions that I sowed the other day are up already, i'll move them down to the greenhouse sometime this week.

I love this time of year, sowing starts off quite slowly and steadily and then snowballs to a frenzie come March.

Growing Potatoes from True Potato Seed

In 2010, my main crop Maris Pipers produced seed heads when the flowers died back.  I had read about growing potatoes from seeds and there were arguments for and against doing it so being a bit of an experimentalist, I decided to give it a go.

I let the seed pods dry out in the greenhouse over winter and around January of 2011 I scraped out some of the seeds.  There were hundreds of these tiny seeds but I only planted up about 10.  I then proceeded to neglect the seedlings that had sprouted (I kept forgetting about them) and by the time March came there were two poorly looking survivors that deserved a chance.  I planted them out and they grew really well, I lifted them at the same time as my first earlies, which was too early for these spuds.  One plant produced two teeny weeny spuds and the other had three viable looking tubers so I saved both varieties in the salad drawer of my fridge and forgot about them again until last night.

I took them out this morning to start chitting them and lo and behold the larger ones already had chits begining to show.  I'll plant these out at the end of March and see what I get back, if they are successful i'll name the varieties.

Growing Sweet Potato Slips and Rooting Lemongrass

I thought I would have another go at growing sweet potato slips.  I tried this a couple of years ago and got some roots but I didn't get any slips by the time they needed to be planted on and I abandoned the project.  This time I started just before xmas and as you can see there is a tiny white root developing. 

 Next to the sweet potato is some lemongrass from the supermarket that i'm rooting. 

The sweet potato now has slips but they are small and taking their time.

Hopefully the forthcoming good weather will push them on a bit.  The roots are looking good but I'm wondering whether to put the whole thing into a pot of compost until the slips are a bit bigger. 

 Any advice would be appreciated.

First signs of life in 2012

We spent a few hours at the plot this afternoon, it was bleedin freezing.  The plan was to move and prune three fruit trees, we only managed to get two done before the sun went down and I couldn't feel my fingers anymore.


It was lovely to see the rosey colour of rhubarb poking its head through the soil...

Even frozen, waterlogged buckets of weeds looked pretty today...

And Sow It Begins

This year I plan to be really organised and sow everything on time so I looked out my seed tins today and they were a bit of a mess.

 Don't you hate when this happens...

Root parsley seed everywhere.....anyway...
Thanks to the lovely Claire for giving us the biggest tin of shortbread I've ever seen, I can now keep all my seeds in one tin instead of three.

Today I sowed

Onion Sturon 
Chili Pretty In Purple
Chili Unknown variety from India (these looked suspiciously like tomato seeds to me but only time will tell)
Pepper Gemusepaprika Fruhzauber (these were very kindly given to me by a forum member from Germany)

Storm Damage 2

Happy New Year to you all.

We had some more storms here, just after New Year, winds reaching over 100mph.  Luckily the only damage we sustained at the plot was some more roof panels off the big greenhouse (they are pretty much all off now)

This roof has leaked since we built the greenhouse so Mother Nature has just given us a wee push to get it sorted properly :)