March update - garlic planted, beds readied, seeds planted

Spent a few hours planting up a few seeds - ran out of both window sill space and containers. Planted some tomatoes, basil, coriander, spring onion and a new variety of basil which I haven't tried before that is supposed to be hardy for Ireland - Sacred Basil Ocimum Sanctum from http://store.irishseedsavers.ie/

Also planted some bedding plants including French Marigolds, asylum and some other plants for different parts of the garden like Morning Glory and Nasturtium.

Enjoying the lovely spring flowers - crocus and mini daffodils. 

We have our light installed by our house name plate now which meant it was finally ready for planting - I had been holding off as even with the best of meaning, they would all have been trampled with the light installation. Planted some violas and 

My strawberry bed after clearing out. Not looking the healthiest after all the frost the last few nights. 

My strawberry nursery - planted my strawberry runners here ready for moving out and passing onto friends in the next month or so before the bed is needed. 

Got my three varieties of garlic planted - though I did have to re-plant a few after the neighbours cat decided to dig up a few!! Think the chicken manure I spread on the bed attracted the cat! 

 These two beds have been cleared down and the manure spread on them in Oct/Nov has mostly broken down in them. Almost ready for planting!

My first glimpse of purple sprouting brocoli! Can't wait to taste as its one I have never had before! 

New paving stones - just put them out in temporary positions at the weekend. Have to figure out what we will do around them for the future with the beds. It does get so mucky when trying to collect the veg during the lovely Irish summer! 

Just a few views around the garden. Looking quiet well - only second year for the rock garden and even now has a nice bit of colour in it.

View back up the garden from the raised beds. 

A lot of digging over still left to be done. 

Strimmed the wild flower section - going to rotivate it again this weekend - it had too much grass planted with the flowers and was taking over. 

So much work to do - so little time ... 

For something different - check out straw bale gardening! 

Orange bed

This is the 5th and final raised bed which we have this year. I had originally decided to have peas and possibly beans in, however I changed my mind as I reckoned as the bed is already nearly 2ft high that this would be too high for easy cultivation of the peas and beans.

This bed has now been removed from the rotation policy. Currently growing some lettuce, rocket and I have about 20 strawberry plants growing there also. When the weather warms up, I plan to plant a couple of bush tomato plants and hope grow some basil outdoors under a small cloche.

Again here I am planting the lettuce a few weeks apart for a continuous supply.

These are the bush tomatoes that I have growing on a south facing window sill. Some I am going to plant into pots for my small greenhouse and some are going to go directly out into the orange bed ( hedging my bets by having some in the greenhouse). All trial and error at this stage. As the weather is continuing to be very cold at night, it will be at least another couple of weeks before I can risk putting these out.

I also have strawberry's growing in a pot called a strawberry pot - for the past few years, I have been growing summer bedding in this pot, but this year I decided to put it to the use it was made for. Looking forward to eating them - loads of flowers so far! Nothing more delicious that strawberries straight from the plant. I put some water retaining gel into the compost when planting this up to help the plants survive small amounts of drought as terracotta pots can dry out very fast in the sun(as they allow vapour out the container sides and bottom). Glazed or plastic pots won't dry out as fast - interesting article here about the Terracotta v Plastic pot debate.
Choosing a Clay or a Plastic Pot

Purple bed

The purple bed is the most boring of the beds in my rotation, but also the one that I am probably guaranteed the best crop. It is my potato bed - the picture below shows the potatoes after their first earthing up. There will also be a second earthing up as the plants grow bigger.

I have seen small amounts of frost damage on a couple of the plants ( a blackening of some of the leaves), however this shouldn't impede them too much as its only minimal damage.

This is my first time planting potatoes in a raised bed, so I am interested to see what the yield will be like compared to the ones grown directly in the soil.

Though this year, my owns in the soil were very late going down - it was late April before they were planted whereas I would have preferred to get them down mid-March - the tradition being to have them planted by St. Patricks day. But we had a lot of other landscaping and moving of soil before the bed could be prepared.
I have a lot of rock picking to do in this bed - will potter along with it as the months go on - will probably not get it all complete this year - but hopefully by next year it will be in good condition.

I have also tried going 3 potato tubers in this pot - nearly ready for its first earthing up. I just want to see how they do and what yield we can get from potatoes even in a pot. Though the pot doesn't look very large here, its probably about 24inches wide at the top and about the same in height. Not sure if its big enough for 3 tubers, but again its only a little side experiment.

Pink Bed

This bed is my daughters favourite and only because of the colour - this is her bed! Ah, to be two again and thing that everything pink is good.

This bed has my brassica family of plants. This include, Brussels sprouts, calebrese, cauliflower, pok choi and a small portion of lettuce squeezed in a spare portion.

This is a tight squeeze into this bed. The Brussels sprouts are on the right hand side of the bed. Next in is the cauliflower, and then the main plant on the left hand side is the calebrese ( broccoli) - plus some lettuces seeds and some bolted pok choi.

This is borrowed straight from the GIY ireland website - tip of the day 11th May 2012
http://www.giyireland.com/tips

Bolting Pak Choi

Pak choi is a member of the brassica family and although its a little hard to grow (the main problem generally is that it is very inclined to bolt), its worth the effort since the entire plant can be eaten - flowering shoots, leaves and stems.

A key requirement is to place the plants in a sheltered site with soil that is not prone to drying out. PC has shallow roots and will dry out if you dont keep the soil moist. Dig in plenty of well rotted manure or compost before sowing. Sow seed directly in the ground in early summer - sowing earlier than this (in cool weather) is the main reason why Pak Choi bolts. Always keep well watered.

This is exactly what has happened to me.  I got young plants back in March and grew them under a cloche for about a month. They have totally bolted ( but at least still edible). I have removed and used about half of them so far - hence the space for the lettuce. But next stir-fry, their days are numbered.

This was the only raised bed I had to add some feed to. A lot of the lower leaves were starting to turn purple which from my internet searches led me to believe a nitrogen deficiency. I used some store bought nitrogen this year, but next year I plan to use some nettles juice( Nettles left soaking for about a month in a bucket of water - note, try to use one with a lid as the stuff stinks from past memory!).

Blue bed

The blue bed is my root vegetable bed for this year. For me this will include carrots, parsnips, beetroot and radishes.

The parsnips are closest. I currently have 3 rows of succession sowing. I mistakenly planted on the advice of the back of the packet which I think was too early. The ones planted a month later have almost caught up. The last sowing germinated so much faster than the previous sowings.

The radishes are the next you see - two sowings - the first are growing really well - looking forward to them in the salads - must look up other recipes for them as they are such an easy to grow veg.

Next there is 2 lines of beetroot ( only one visible so far). Again I think I planted this a bit too early as April and May haven't been the best this year and are quiet cold. But still a row of healthy plants is nice to see.

At the top then I have 3 rows of carrots planted with the oldest against the top of the box. Nearly ready to start spacing them out. Good tip from the GIY website is to remove any thinned plants away from the box as you may attract the dreaded pest - the carrot root fly.

I had most of the top portion of soil sieved in this bed - not sure if I went deep enough - time will tell - I reckon I will have some forked carrots and parsnips. For next year I will have to do a lot more work prior to putting down the seeds. All of the above have been sown directly into soil.

I am doing an experiment with some extra carrot seeds. I am growing them in old toilet roll inserts filled with compost. This is supposed to help you get a better formed carrot as there are no rocks etc for them to hit while growing. Then when its planted out - the cardboard will disintegrate leaving lovely carrots - in theory anyhow - will wait and see.

Red bed

Going to do a section on each of the raised beds in my garden. As the red bed was the first one put in place, filled and planted, it was the obvious place to start.

This bed has the veg from the onion family which for me include garlic, red and white onions (funnily enough), scallions (spring onion) and leeks.

As the bed was only created and filled in Feb of this year - the garlics were a bit late being planted. I had them stored in the fridge to give them the frost kick-start.

The leeks were the last veg put into this bed - just last weekend. I had grown leeks from seed, but hadn't read up properly on the best practice for growing them, so ended up using store bought plants from B&Q.

The onions were planted early March - both the red and the white - the white took off very quickly, but the reds are now nearly catching up.

In the bed I have my scallions all sown in a line - they are in the bed about a month. Since they I watched a great video on the GIY Ireland website which gave a great suggestion on how to grown the scallions(spring onions). There are also many more excellent videos on their site on growing your own vegetables.

http://www.giyireland.com/videos/detail/spring_onions

Basically you grow ( as I have prepared here indoors for my next batch out) about 8 seeds per module in the seed tray. You do not thin them or separate them, you just plant out the whole grouping. Then when its time to pick - you pick the whole group similar as to how you would buy them in the shops. Inspired idea!

So far I haven't had any issues or work to do with this bed bar hoeing and rock picking ( was too much in a rush at the start to sieve the bed, but its definitely a job for next year!). My garlics are looking a little yellow, but I think this has been due to the bed drying out rather than rust - will wait and see.

I also grew some garlics on a flower bed between some roses and these were planted out in Nov/Early Dec. These had the dual purpose of growing garlic and also helping prevent some diseases and pests on the roses.

I have some onions and a handful of leeks growing in the soil. The onions were planted about two months after the onions in the raised bed. They are only planted about 3 weeks when this photo was taken. The leeks are at the far end in the shadow- only planted a week.