Fab weather

The weather in Ireland over the past few days has just been fabulous!! Plants have been thriving in the extra warmth - gone from frost by night the week before to temps in the mid to high 20's C.

The potatoes in the purple bed are so healthy looking - doing great so far. Really hopeful of a good crop from these if they stay this healthy!

   

 The Calebrese ( broccoli to you and me)  has started showing its first signs of the flowers forming ( which of course is actually the part we eat). I will have to monitor these closely over the next few weeks as it can go very quickly from ready to pick to flowering and too far gone. 

I will have a large amount ready at the same time, but planning on blanching and freezing them for a supply through the next few months. Just pick - into boiling water for 2-3mins, cool, dry and then onto a freezer tray for a few hours and then bag them up and most importantly label them with date picked. You can just put them into a bag to freeze after blanching, but they will all freeze together and make it very hard to use them.

Spring onions (in groups) planted out. There were about 8 seeds put into each plug tray and now planted out between 2 wide rows of garlic into the red bed.

 

 

Finally got started with getting some of the bark down. Over 20 bags later, time was called and off to enjoy the sunshine. Plenty of days in the week to be putting down bark - but it might just have been our summer!

Jobs to do this week:

Hoeing - bit behind on this - though did spend over an hour hoeing and rocking picking at my peas last weekend.

More scallion and herb seeds to sow

Get my purple sprouting broccoli started for next spring

Also saved some cyclamen seeds from the plants through last winter and going to try sowing them now for autumn - don't know if the seeds will be viable or not - only one way to find out I reckon :-) If anyone has any tips - feel free to let me know!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclamen

Rock picking - so many rocks/stones in the soil here. Using all that I collect as mini paths/edges around my raised beds. Buckets and buckets have been picked so far. 

Ok - as I look at that list, I better go out and get started and leave the updating :-)))

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.

Return to you about garden finally - been busy!!

Ok - been away from this far too long - but trust me, I never left the garden. Will update tomorrow with a load of photos from different stages. We got "distracted" by landscaping our garden, putting in a path, getting groundwork done for patio, moving loads of soil around, rock picking and still more rock picking.
The bed order changed slightly from my initial plans.
Bed 1 - garlics, onions, scallions, leeks

Bed 2 - bok choi, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, calebrese (brocolli)

Bed 3 - carrots, parsnips, beetroot, radishes

Bed 4 - potatoes

Bed 5 - took this out of rotation - just growing strawberries, lettuce - plan to also put in some bush tomatoes too as a trial.

Also, directly in the soil - peas, potatoes, onions, leeks

Growing horseradish in a pot. Never seen it grown before! Interesting times - not sure as yet when to harvest and will be on the lookout for recipes.

My apple, plum trees and berry bushes planted last year are also showing flowers so we are hopefully looking at a first crop this year,

Rhubarb isn't looking so healthy - who would have known slugs love rhubarb.

Also have tomatoes growing indoors in preparation for my greenhouse ( aldi/lidl special), some chillies (cheated with them, bought them from B&Q as a small plant), basil, corriander (first batch nearly ready to eat!!).

Okay- decided to upload one of the finished photos - will have to wait till tomorrow for the rest of the stages. Hopefully I plan to upload sections on different vegetables/herbs and other plants with tips/tricks I come across. I will also upload some recipes of interest that link in with the food I am growing. Always tastes so much fresher when its homegrown.

The path (new) leads down to the multi coloured beds - there will also be a patio down there shortly(as soon as roadstone get around to delivering it!). This way we will be able sit down of an evening and if you get the munchies, you can just pick from the beds directly,