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! 

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.