Been busy recently

Have been busy recently with work - it's that time of year I suppose, and actually travelled down to Glasgow to help my mum and Jim sort out their garden over the weekend.
On the home front, things are progressing apace, all five varieties of potatoes (Casablanca, Kestrel, Winston, Maxine and Harmony) that are being grown in polypots are showing the tips of their shaws, those shallots that were deemed worthy have been thinned down to four bulbs with the thinnings being used in the kitchen, the broad beans are starting to put on some growth of the vertical kind, the carrots and parsnips are growing away steadily now and the beetroot has been thinned to one plant per station. In the greenhouse, there are still some young tomato and cucumber plants for clients, but of my own stuff, the next two Carmen cucumbers are just showing their first true leaf, the courgettes has two true leaves each, the Stenner runner beans have just germinated, the first batch of dwarf french bean The Prince have been potted into their large growing pots and the second batch sown into 3" pots tonight. The lettuce Festa, the turnips Snowball and the second batch of beetroot Pablo have all just germinated. The one pressing job is to pot on the chillies and Capsicums - tomorrow night hopefully - unfortunately I have paperwork to catch up with tonight.
Over at the tunnel, the brassicas are growing pretty darn quick - too quick in some cases I think, so I may have to make another sowing of cabbages and caulies at the weekend. The onion sets (Setton) in the raised beds are doing really well and are on target for harvesting at the end of July. The tomatoes seem to have settled in are are now beginning to grow away, the aubergines are looking fine and healthy, the first cuke is not doing a lot at the moment but I am not too worried - previous years have taught me that they are slow to get going then absolutely fly when they decide to get started. And the rhubarb is just awesome this year!! and I have already got myself another 4 blue barrels for next season so I might grow more parsnips, and try long carrots and long beetroot too - it's getting a wee bit of an obsession now - wish I could devote more time to it this year but I can only do what I can do.
It was the May meeting of our local gardening club (of which I am secretary) last night and we were treated to a very amusing and informative talk on how to stage exhibits for showing, both flowers and vegetables. More than a few valuable tips were passed on to the assembled audience, as well as recommended varieties that work up here - most of the well known show varieties but also the favoured onion for the onions from sets class seems to be Hercules, and the favoured broad bean is Inperial Green Longpod. For onions from seed, these guys recommended Marco as opposed to Tasco. So thanks must go to JK Ross, John McKay and also to Wattie McBeath, a local exhibition grower who joined them. John brought along a cell pack of a dozen Celeriac plants (variety "Brilliant") that I got hold of at the end of the night, however by the end of today there were none left for me!! However JK is going to pass me a few spare Pendle leek plants that he has so that's another new show veg I shall be dabbling in this season.

Starting to plant up the polytunnel

Well, things have moved on quite a bit since my last post, courtesy of my greenhouse, heated propogator and a whole week of excellent weather up here. My parsnips, which seemed to take forever to germinate now have their first true leaf,

the Sweet Candle carrots, which seemed to take even longer, are just showing signs of their first true leaf,

the Hative de Niort shallots are starting to split so will be ready to thin out to four bulbs each soon, with the thinnings being replanted for culinary use,

the Bunyards Broad Beans are all through, except for the five that the mice took, though I had ten replacements in pots so the mice loss was not such a big deal and the first sowing of Pablo beetroot are through.
I have also sown my Stenner Runner Beans and the first batch of the Prince Dwarf French Beans as well as another two Cucumber Carmen in the heated propogator

The other tomato plants etc in the propogator are for some of my clients greenhouses.

My greenhouse was getting a bit crowded, so on Sunday afternoon, I took a load of plants over to the polytunnel - 10 x Tomato Cedrico, 5 x Tomato Shirley,

5 x Aubergine Half Long Violette and a tray each of Hispi Cabbage, Samantha Savoy Cabbage, Cauliflower Cheesy, PSB Red Arrow, Calabrese Marathon and the first of the Cucumber Carmen plants. The cauliflower are planted to the left of the cuke frame -the idea being that the cuke foliage will provide some shade - but if it doesn't, I have some shade netting I can attach to the cuke frame uprights. Hopefully this will  help keep the curds white.

These were all duly planted out and each of the tomato, aubergine and cucumber plants have one litre pots sunk into the soil beside them This is to ensure that when I water them, the water (or feed for that matter) gets to where it needs to go - the roots! It also stops (or at least lessens) the chances of water soaking the base of the stems and causing rots. The Medwyn Triffid has slowed a bit but is sooking up water like a good 'un - 1 x 5 gallon drum every second day during this warm spell, even with the tunnel door open.
And to finish, tonight I have sown my peas (Show Perfection) in root-trainer pots, sown my first batch of Snowball turnips, a second batch of Pablo beetroot and a dozen Red Lettuce Feska (this will be successionally sown every ten days of so from now on.

Morning - Garden, Afternoon - Polytunnel

Got up late this morning as Maggie and the kids are away and I work on Friday and Saturday nights so it was nice to get a long lie. Anyway, after a cup of coffe and the first ciggie of the day, it was out to the greenhouse / garden, where I sowed an assortment of tomato seeds for my various gardens - the varieties sown were Black Cherry, Tigerella, Golden Sunrise and Favorita. I also sowed some more capsicums for two of the gardens I look after, and to finish I sowed one of my cucumber seeds (cariety Carmen) - I have 4 more to sow and will sow two more in a fortnight and two more the following week, to try and spread the harvesting period. All are now snug in my heated propagator.
I then filled my "beetroot box" with a 50/50 mix of seived molehill soil and seived MP compost, added some Vitax Q4 and sowed my beetroot seeds (variety Pablo F1).
Direct sowed three rows of broad beans (Bunyards Exhibition) in one of my raised beds.
After another cup of coffee and a smoke, me and Charlie (the Sprollie dog) jumped in the van and set off for the tunnel - a trip of about 7 miles.
Got there and opened the door to let Charlie out the van - he flew out and reappeared about 20 seconds later with a rabbit in his jaws - good boy Charlie!! (dead rabbit omitted from photo)

In the tunnel, I gave the soil a good soaking using the overhead irrigation system, and put in some more marker canes, so I now know where the tomatoes (x 15), runner beans (x 18), cucumbers (x 5), chillies,(x 46) capsicums (x 8) and aubergines (x 5) will be going. The tyre at the far end marks where the Giant Marrow will be planted and I have allocated approximately a quarter of the tunnel floorspace for it. The remaining floorspace will be filled with lettuce / salad leaf mix, cabbages, cauliflowers (grown underneath the cucumbers to shade them from direct sunlight), French Beans (in 5 litre pots), onion sets (1690 already in) long shallots (already in) and whatever else I think about at the time.

I then decided that I should really make a start on tidying the place up a bit as it has been a bit of a tip for long enough, so I planted up a "fedge" consisting of 2 year old blackcurrants and recurrants (all grown from cuttings) and gooseberries (grown from layered plants), and started to cobble together some beds and filled them with manure, of which I have a plentiful supply.

Then I started to clear out the shed so that I could actually find stuff this season, and burnt a lot of the rubbish.

Happy Birthday to me

It was my birthday on Sunday, though at my age it tends to mean less and less! However, I had a good day and got a bit of time to sort out the polytunnel. I got the growing areas rotavated and raked level and then gave them a good soaking with the overhead irrigation system, then planted a shed load of onion sets in the two onion beds in the tunnel. Then I decided what crops were going where based on where I grew things over the last couple of seasons, and duly erected my cucumber framework, placed my tomato canes and put up my bean supports. When I got home, I had a delicios home made indian meal with Maggie and the girls and opened my pressies - including the extension cable and the compost I had asked them to get.
Then it was cake time - Maggie and Iona had made the cake, and Iona ( 9yo daughter) decorated it all by herself - quite brilliantly if you ask me

Back to work on Monday, pruning more trees but had to come home at lunchtime today (Tuesday) as Niamh (3yo daughter) is not well and I had to look after her as Maggie was otherwise occupied. So the two of us spent some time sowing seeds in the kitchen - we sowed some PSB, Spring Onions (5 per module to be planted out in clumps), some sweet peas, some broad beans (Niamh's favourite soup is broad bean soup), and a  whole heap of Cayenne Chillies. Niamh fell asleep so I took the opperchancity to do some work on my exhibition veggies - I sowed my Sweet Candle carrots in my stumpy box (cored out to a depth of 16"), cored and bored my parsnip barrel and filled it with the growing mix in anticipation of sowing in the near future (the seeds for this are currently chitting between two sheets of moist kitchen roll), planted out my Hative De Niort shallots into their raised bed along with some Setton onion sets, potted on some more of my Setton and Red Baron onion sets into 5 litre pots, and sowed my Cedrico tomato seeds which are now nestling up nice and cosy in the heated propagator in the greenhouse (that's what the extension lead was for !)
All in all not a bad couple of days.

All systems go for Sunday

It's my birthday on Sunday (21 yet again) and I only want a couple of things (well. if you wanna split hairs I suppose you could say 7).
First off is a new extension lead - this is required to power my heated propogator in the greenhouse - last year I used two leads but one has a permanent job elsewhere and the remaining one isn't long enough on it's own.
Secondly is 6 bags of MP compost.
My seeds arrived from Medwyn's yesterday - Pea Show Perfection, Cucumber Carmen, Runner Bean Stenner (reselected), Dwarf French Bean The Prince and Tomato Cedrico. These are the ones that I ordered but on opening the package I discovered two additional packets -Parsnip Albion and Giant Marrow.

I gave Medwyn's a call and they said that I could just keep the extra seeds, so tomorrow I'll go and collect a blue barrel from my shed for the parsnips and I suppose that the Giant Marrow will go into my polytunnel, though I might have to rethink my planting plan, especially having had a look at Medwyn's photos of his!

Anyways, will start to chit both the parsnips and the Giant marrow tomorrow night as advised by Medwyns by placing the seeds between two sheets of moist kitchen roll - I have read various blogs where show growers do this with the parsnips but as I have never thought about Giant Marrows before, I didn't know this was advisable for them too.
My plan for Sunday is to sow the Cedrico (along with some chiliies and other toms) and get them into the heated propogator, and to sow the Sweet Candle carrots in my stumpy box which is now filled with settled sand and just needs boring out and filling with the growing medium, the ingredients of which are ready to be mixed.
I also need to get my Hative De Niort shallots planted out - again, the bed is prepared but time just doesn't seem to be on my side.

Getting Ready

As mentioned in a previous post, my exhibition tatties are chitting away quite happily, the Hative De Niort shallots are sprouting away merrily in the greenhouse, the Setton and Red Baron onion sets are just starting to throw up some shoots, and I have ordered the seeds for the other veg I plan to put into a couple of local shows this year. The seed was all oredered from Medwyn Williams website and should be here anytime now. I have ordered the following;
Cucumber - Carmen
Tomato - Cedrico
Pea - Show Perfection
Carrot - Sweet Candle
Runner Bean - Stenner
Dwarf French Bean - The Prince

I will also grow Beetroot (Pablo) and Broad Beans (Bunyards Exhibition)

As well as this show veg I shall be growing a variety of other veg including cabbages, lettuces, kale, parsnips, chillies, sweet peppers, ying yang beans, standard carrots, chard, cauliflower, beetroot, scallions and leeks.

On the flower front, I will probably try some Decorative and some Pom Pom dahlias for the show and maybe some African Marigolds.

The gardening club (of which I am secretary) is having a class for members only this year and after last nights meeting, I have come home with yet another polypot and a ssed potato, variety Charlotte. The aim in this class is noit the perfect potato but who can grow the heaviest weight of potatoes in their polypot from one seed tuber.

It's my birthday in a fortnight and when the girls asked me what I would like, they were slightly bemused when I asked for 6 bags of compost!

Crown lifting Norway Spruce

Just a few pics showing how I spend my Mondays and Tuesdays



Each tree is lifted to between 6 - 7 ft, and as you can see, the cyt branches are then spread round the base of the trees and the rows of young Nordmann Pine Christmas Trees which grow on either side of the "nursery" stock.