The even bigger and better and hopefully not lower bits of growing your own in 2022!

MissRikkiC

Horse muck collected Sunday, well and truly rotted down which I’m pleased about. Literally the next village and we can just go back for however much we need which is fantastic. 

Shallot sets planted in a tray last week, will let the soil keep warming and plant them out soon. 

Another bag of spud seeds bought this weekend as the first lot I got were second earlies and not first. 

Keeping a watchful eye on the WSB which overwintered and whilst has been slow, it’s finally starting to produce now, thank goodness.  

The ‘spring onions’ I pulled up/trimmed  last month; seems they were in fact bulb onions and won’t be ready yet, but almost a bit pleased I’ve already had off them. 

Tested out the spring greens tonight with dinner and boy are they strong tasting! I’m not sure I actually enjoyed them at all, they were SO over powering! Not sure if that’s because they’re HG or what but I definitely prefer the more bland type from the supermarket 😂

My veg plans this year will be a combination of square foot gardening and rotational planting, using Huw Richards, veg in 1 bed methods. 

I’ve managed to coerce my husband into giving me a little of his garden ‘coffin’ for extra planting this year. He built, terribly I made add, a 7ft long, 3ft wide raised bed a few years ago which took him longer than it ever should! So I weeded that this weekend whilst it was so dry and bought some more seeds, which I’d like to get started this next fortnight. Peppers, peas, strawberries and lettuces. Think I’m supposed to have started broccoli seeds off already but I forgot to buy those! 

Suffolk_lass

I have potatoes chitting in the larder now as I needed the windowsill. And on the basis that the wretched supermarket potatoes all produce shoots in there, I thought the potatoes might speed up a bit! I have my warming thingy with tomatoes in and a tray of chilli seeds on the windowsill under cover. Fingers crossed they germinate. Last year was a complete nightmare with mice so most things will start off indoors then find their way into the cold frame and I will use the greenhouse for general working, cleaning, documenting and pottering - oh, and growing stuff later of course!

MovingForwards

I've a good selection of spuds chitting, left them in a paper bag over winter, tucked in a cold cupboard and they're ready to go out, as are the seed spuds from the nursery.

I ordered some early and mid season seeds, hopefully they arrive by the weekend. I've still got sufficient seeds for winter veg growing.

One thing I really want to do this year is dry herbs for winter use. 

Suffolk_lass

I've never bothered with drying herbs but I do freeze some

carinjo

A couple of short sessions on allotment yesterday and today. Digging and pruning (gooseberries).

A nearby allotment got a big heap of woodchip, so grabbed some to lay on a couple of pathways. 
Got gifted a few pots of pointed cabbage seedlings, broccoli and a dozen strawberry runners. 
Ms C starting a new job, so we will have to adjust accordingly, but looking forward to this year!

Suffolk_lass

Oh how lovely @carinjo. I hope you can keep up with your allotment with less input from Ms C. Not sure if you have ever tried rooting your gooseberry cuttings but they take really easily - I was amazed. This time of year they are on the point of bursting so just plunge them in the ground until they root then move them before they really establish!

carinjo

Unfortunately i do not have space for more gooseberries, but i will ask a few neighbours if they would like some, some are on their first spring at allotment this year.
I harvested my first rhubarb, only 3 stalks  i am adamant of having another go at rhubarb gin, so *fingers crossed* 

Fosterdog

Things are starting to come alive in the garden now. The garlic planted last year is doing really well, I planted a few more cloves a few weeks ago in with my strawberries to deter pests and they are coming up now too. I've got a couple of crocuses that actually survived the rat attack that are blooming, my anemone corms are being attacked now but quite a few have already come up so hopefully they won't wipe out the whole bed. 

All of my beds are now fully ready to be planted up, just the containers to fill as and when I need them. Bell peppers on windowsill on a heat mat are doing better than ever before, I haven't used the grow light yet so they are slightly leggy but really not as bad as previous years, hoping for my best year from them. Red barron onion seeds started indoors have come to nothing, just a single seed germinated and not looking too good, I think it was the compost used as my MIL had a bag of the same and has had very poor germination results this year too.

On the weekend I finally got around to building the mini greenhouse and got my onion sets in there along with a second batch of red Barron seeds in different compost, my first batch of peas, first batch of runner beans (from seeds harvested last year), and spinach. I have a week off at the end of the month so won't be doing any more sowing until then when I'll have plenty of time to get it all done over a day or two. 

Also ordered more sweetcorn seeds as only have around 10 left from last year, some new runner bean varieties to try, a couple of new pea varieties, and a whole host of flowers, no idea where I'll put them but I'm really liking getting into growing flowers as well as fruit and veg.

Suffolk_lass

My potatoes are in their egg box chitting in the larder, having moved them from the kitchen windowsill and they are really liking it. Green shoots visible - it is next to the aga so quite warm (they are on the colder non-aga side). The tomato seeds are germinating on the windowsill and the chilli seeds are on the warming thingy. My sweet-pea plug plants arrived by post (from Kings Seeds) they look to be excellent bushy little plants and I will get these transplanted to pots and into the cold frame (that I need DH to help me repair).

I popped to the garden centre and managed to get a packet of (T&M) Sungold F1H tomato seeds (£3.99 for 8 seeds!) so will start them too as they are my favourite. I actually said out loud, I'm only going to try and get tomato seeds. Yeah right! While at the garden centre I picked up a packet of Cuor die Bue seeds (field grown tomatoes we buy in the Italian SM) - I might try these on the sunny patio as they don't really like the greenhouse. I also bought a packet of (T&M) Blauhilde climbing French bean - they are tasty and stringless and the have a beautiful purple flower as well as purple pods that cook well. Another packet of Borlotti beans might have been acquired too - from the Italian seed people they are cheaper and more seeds than the British ones. I know they are not native but they usually grow well here and I freeze them to include in chilli instead of kidney or pinto beans.

Oh yes, although I was at a funeral a few hours away yesterday, I managed to get out and clear a couple of raised veg beds.Just to add these are too big and wide - a lesson others could learn from us - test a comfortable stretch to be able to weed standing with a border fork and kneeling - I can just reach the middle at a stretch and a stepping stone or plank but will I be able to in 10 years time?!

basketcase

May I join in?

I really need to get my bahookie in gear and this thread is great.  TBH, I've not much idea what I'm doing.  "Stick it in the ground and hope for the best" isn't good enough, is it?  Especially where I live.

I'm up in NE Scotland and I have a (recently shamefully neglected) one-third allotment and a verandah.  I went up to the allotment today.  We've recently had bad weather, storms and a break-in plus I've been helping DD to relocate from London, so I wasn't sure what I'd find.  Everything seemed intact, including a shed I inherited which is obviously a lot less decrepit than it looks!  (Let's just say they broke into the shed next to it, but didn't even cut the padlock on mine! ) 

It was bitterly  cold and a bit breezy (20-25mph, gusting 40), so I just cleared a couple of beds a harvested the celeriac and usable red cabbage and half (c 20) of the leeks.  (I'm going to clean, blanch and freeze most of them).

I then noticed my beautiful new wheelbarrow has either:

a) been put away for safe keeping

b) blown away in one of the gales

c) been nicked during the break-in.

Last year I laid quite a few 2mx1m and 1mx1m raised beds, laid paths and covered them with weed suppressant fabric and woodchips, dug a couple of trenches to bury things I wanted to rot down, laid a flower bed near a south-facing wall and another 2 narrow beds along the 'walls'.  So now I only need to get a 3mx2m fruit cage and get a new lean-to greenhouse type thing.  Oh, and get rid of a dogwood that's threatening to take over the world!

I did plant a few things, but I left it rather late - not accounting for seasonal differences etc.  Plus quite a lot of stuff (beans, sweet peas, strawberries, lettuces, beetroots etc) seemed to get eaten.  So this year I'm going to net as much as I can (as advised when you take on the plot!) and wait till my plants are big enough to bite back before I transfer them to the plot!

So, it was mostly infrastructure, but I did have some successes:

• herbs
• red cabbages (small, but perfectly formed!)
• celeriac (ditto)
• leeks
• more leeks
• dahlias
• chocolate cosmos
• calendula
• the sweet peas that didn't get eaten!
• lupins
• the dogwood (it makes really nice pea and bean supports)

My plan is to grow stuff that needs basic maintenance on the plot and more demanding/attackable stuff on the verandah.  I quite fancy a globe artichoke, but don't know how it'd get on.

I've got potatoes chitting and I planted 2x3 different blueberries last autumn.  Hopefully they've weathered to winter.  Time to go through my seeds and see what I'm going to grow.

Better get off to sort and plan.  And find looooads of recipes for leeks!