Putting food on the table.........differently!

One of the things that we love to eat is salad.  One of the things I consistently fail to grow is salad.  This leaves us at something of an impasse.  I was considering putting the salad veg in the tunnel, then I came across the concept of salad tables.  This is a raised bed idea that takes advantage of the fact that most salad veg is not deep rooted and it would be useful to keep it out of the reach of slugs and snails. 

Starting at the beginning, we used to have chickens.  We loved them lots and while they were with us they destroyed my garden whilst giving us eggs.  They were also a bit too much for the space we had so when they reached the natural conclusion of their lives I didn't replace them. This left me with a substantial homemade chicken hutch that I was loath to just get rid of or destroy that was leading me gently towards an idea. In truth it was a kind of convergent thinking really, as other people had clearly come to the same conclusions as I had, just I started off kindof from the other end. 

So I stripped the hutch down until it was a table with a framework for putting a cover on later. And Tadah! I had a salad table.


These guys got there first http://www.growit.umd.edu/SaladTablesandSaladBoxes/ but mine was cheaper LOL. 

I first set it up on 7th May this year

So Far So Good!

and things started germinating just 6 days later!

The nearest section contains spring onions, radishes and carrots, the middle is all salad leaves and peas (for leaves) and I just had some other stuff on the end.

I was frankly astonished at how well it was going.  So I eventually sorted the other end out and planted up the summer cabbages, curly kale some more carrots (round this time) and threw some seeds at the leftover space - coriander and rocket.  Again germination was swift and viola!

This is what it looks like now.  We've been cropping from it lightly for a week or so already and I'm liking this idea a lot.  It's giving me about 10sq ft extra to plant and the slugs haven't yet found it!

Um......why is it not bigger?

It's a question that all gardeners ask at some stage.  Not often at this stage of the year perhaps, but eventually. I was asking it because being somewhat spatially challenged,  I had just discovered that my master plan had fallen down on one major criterion.  Planning.   Bit of a flaw in a masterplan really.  It was a good plan, in my head, where the garden is considerably bigger.  It would have been a better plan, if heavily reworked, if I'd gone out and actually measured stuff (which as my ex always said was not something I was ever good at. Lucky for him I say!).  But it was raining, torrentially, constantly, miserably, raining.  I may have mentioned this before.  It's been a bit of a feature. 

Anyhoo, this was my yard this morning:

The right hand side as you look at it was where the chickens used to live,  the coop has been re-purposed elsewhere (more of that later), the left, last year, was where the tunnel was.  Now looking at it, even I can see that my plan to shift the tunnel through 90 degrees and add four raised beds in the space it used to occupy was doomed to failure, but in my head it worked, ok?

So on with the motley, I put the cover back on (entertaining when you're as short as me and surprise pockets of water are lurking therein) and shifted it round.  It became apparent at that point that 4 beds may have been a little optimistic.

But I have a rammed growhouse full of seedlings! and I haven't even put the swede in yet! 

I should probably point out that my garden is not supposed to look like a scrap merchants yard, It got savagely re-arranged by the chickens, yes, but actually the messiness is caused by a bit of a chinese tile puzzle sort of effect where you have to move one thing beforeyou can slide another thing in to take its place.  On the right is the wood pile, never elegant.  On the left is the tyre pile, left from growing potatoes.  I have a cunning plan for them.  And yet more chicken run bits. 

Last year, I had a bit of a problem with things blowing away, or over so this year my first move is going to be to guy rope the tunnel to the ground and nail it to the fence, at the back, and some tree stakes, at the front.  And if you never thought Girl Guides was useful, and I know I didn't, I have to thank them for still being able to make a useful sliding knot out of clothes line for my guy ropes, all these years later. 

As you can see, there's not much yard left now, but I reckon I can still get 2 beds in at the end.  For the third, may I introduce you to - tyre pile.  Would've had to store them somewhere anyway so why not use them as instant raised beds?

Et viola! tunnel moved, plan completely replanned, beans planted (tho I hadn't intended to do that I just got carried away!),  The plants in buckets are peas, to appease (sorry) the furry garden pests (see Garden Pests and how to feed them.....)

Next step: cleaning the ground inside the tunnel and making beds for the tomatoes and peppers.  I'l catch up when I'm done :)

Garden Pests, and how to feed them.........

I've just been out to check on the beans I planted out yesterday.  I hadn't started my day expecting to plant out beans but one thing led to another and before I knew it I was thinking, 'well...I could put those in there...and those over there....' as you do.  Astonishingly, they're still there, this is something of an acheivement. 

Runner Beans (stick beans?)

Usually I provide beans, lettuce, cabbage etc. every year in the garden to nourish and nurture the local slug and snail population.  Few people in my area seem to grow veggies in their back yard so I've always thought that word gets out that my house has laid on buffet for everyone.  As it started to rain, torrentially as soon as I finished firming them in I fully expected them to form the entree for this year's banquet.

Slug's eye view

Which begs the question of why I do it in the first place.  Well, that's because with the survivors (from the slugs) I can fend off and occupy my other slightly furrier, garden pests!

If you see any of these three predators, do not let them near any edible vegetables. Peas, pea foliage, raw beans, cabbage, salads and any kind of fruit are all attacked without mercy.  Do not be taken in by the long ears and fluffy cuteness as I suspect at least one of them is faking it.  I'm just not sure which one yet! 

Oooh! Can I steal your dandelions?

Now that's not something you hear everyday, but next door had such a fabulous crop and they didn't really want them and I like to homebrew and.........you can see where this is going can't you?  Yup, dandelion beer.  It could be dandelion wine but my middle name isn't Patience.  There's a reason for that. 

The only thing the garden has produced this year thus far is nettles (already brewing) and a couple of pathetic dandelions but I think things are improving.  I have a growhouse full of  all the plants I grew from the seeds in the previous post, almost all of them germinated enthusiastically except the aubergines, which are traditionally temperamental so I was well impressed, good effort Seed Parade (where I bought the seeds) http://www.seedparade.co.uk/.  The aubergines are still slouching around like a teenager on a monday morning, still, they never ripen anyway.  Everything is getting to the point where I really need it to stop raining for a few days so I can put the tunnel up. 

UK readers will know that we had a minor heat wave through March, during which I did a lot of garden tidying, followed by a solid month of torrential rain, during which I stayed indoors and sulked.  And planted more seeds, and ordered more seeds, and planted them, untill I ran out of room.  So now I really, really need the weather to stop mucking around and make like it understands that it is now spring/summer before the house and growhouse reach critical mass.

One of the things I've planted is burdock, which I'm rather hoping will go with the dandelion eventually.  Strangely after spending two days researching burdock and where I could get some seeds I realised I had some on the dining table, coated in graphite paint ready to electroform.  I gathered them last autumn from a nearby park.  Doh! So now we will find out if paint prevents germination.

Is that your pile of dead leaves?

Well, the net result of spending 2 months on the frontline at the other end of the country was that everything in the tunnel and everywhere else pretty much died except for the runner beans.

The runner beans had a bumper year on the other hand and clearly benefited from the lack of supervision.  We had soooo many beans.  I even salted some, tho to be honest, looking at them now, I really hope we never get that hungry.  They've kind of turned into a vegetable 'dwarf bread equivalent'.

The bottle of beans apart, last year was pretty much a bust so on with the motley, a new year beckons.

I haven't ventured out into the garden yet,  there's a bit of a pile up in the utility room and I don't have any mountaineering gear to hand.  I have, however, recieved the first of the gardening catalogues and spent many happy hours leafing through it and deciding which seeds to go look for on the internetz.

So after extensive research (playing on the net) and cross referencing (googling stuff) and considerable agonising, I have put in my first order for this year's seeds.  I am attempting to be more disciplined about it than usual by making a list of things I want to grow and dividing it into sowing months.   Thus all the seeds on the order are sowable now.  In theory this will stop the usual May bottleneck where I suddenly have more plants than space LOL.

So here it is:

	Tomato Black Russian 50 seeds
	Tomato Gardener's Delight 100 seeds
	Tomato Roma VF 100 seeds
	Aubergine Black Beauty 200 seeds
	Hot Pepper - Habanero Orange 25 seeds
	Hot Pepper - Tepin 10 seeds
	Sweet Pepper D'asti Giallo 50 seeds
	Onion Braunschweigi 300 seeds
	Cauliflower All The Year Round 200 seeds
	Mangetout Pea Oregon Sugar Pod 200 seeds Strawberry white soul Strawberry regina

Keep on swimming, swimming, swimming....

This one fits in  around the end of last May.

You probably know the title from Finding Nemo, sung by Dory, the very absent minded fishy freind of Nemo's Dad.  Why fish on a gardening blog? Well, that's kinda where my head is at right now.  Since my last post some idiot has put a bunch of holidays all close together and what with processing up and down the country to various relatives and working and whatnot, my brain forgot my blog password. Duh!  But I've remembered it now, as you can see.

Many things have happened, stuff has grown, I put my growhouse out in the yard and we had a gale and it fell over so many things are now randomised, which is always good for a laugh at planting out time.  I can identify things generically, but I have several varieties of tomato, some experimental, and a bunch of different cucurbitae that I can no longer tell apart (Joy!).  Suffice to say, the growhouse is now firmly attached to the fence, but the damage is done, and I should have tied it down in the first place, it's not like it didn't happen last year (just keep swimming.....that's a nice castle!.......)

The polytunnel, however, is being an absolute life saver, my beans are romping away and it's starting to look like a little enclosed jungle.  I've been short on time of late, trying to earn a living, so everything all needs potting up and planting out now and I haven't even ventured as far as the allotment yet.  Still, I saw this really cool thing about making pots out of newspaper on the Chelsea Flower Show so I'm going to give that a try.

So much stuff, so little day.  I can hear you saying 'Well stop blathering on about stuff and do some gardening' and I totally agree with you, so if you want me I'll be in the polytunnel..............

The End of the World, Part 2

The one or two people that actually read any of my blogs will be aware that I have not updated them for a while.  This was sadly due to a family bereavement which basically took the rug out from under us for a while.  I am hopeful that as the world returns to normal updates will resume.