Another attempt to get up to date!

As you can see, things are a growing on our Pumpkin Patch! Plot1 is growing nicely, with onions and garlic growing well, the Jerusalem Fartichokes are now at 3' tall, tatties are doing well, brassicas are growing nicely, sweetcorn is about 6" tall, courgettes are at 6 leaf stage, peas and beans are up and growing well, broad beans are flowering and the first pods have set, strawbs are ripening nicely (and getting munched by the slugs before they are fully ready!), goosegogs are swelling up and rasps have set fruit too!

On Plot2 (the Beanery) we've tatties, peas, beans, corn and pumpkins doing well, I'll post a few piccies in the next post to bring us up to date for any that would like to see, along with a few of our first crops!

As you can see here, the overwintering onions and garlic are growing on really well, with the cold snap we have had a few start to go to seed, but we've removed the flowers and will use these as our first batch (as they wont store well)! The spring sown onion sets and garlic are also doing well (they are the crops nearest the fartichokes in front of the pond at the back of this bed), as are the banana shallots and onions from seed! You can also see the first batch of parsnips in this piccy, behind the garlic and beyond the path that divides the beds horizontally! BTW, the discolouration on the beds is a generous application of Potash Mr D applied from the remains of weeds burnt in his new incinerator!

Inbetween the blocks of overwintering onions is our first few batches of carrots, which are doing ok, but they do seem to be suffering a little from the attention of the local wabbits! Something keeps nibbling the green foliage clean off, no evidence of slugs, so we can only assume its wabbits! Mr D would like to do something about it, but hunting on the plot isnt allowed, unfortunately!

In the plot1 greenhouse we've our first cucumber approaching edible size, with another 4 fruit forming too, we've lots of Naga Jolokia Chillies, some at 15cm long and ripe to pick (having some in a curry tonight!), and Big Jim chillies now at 11.5cm long, big enough to put us on the leaderboard of the Chileman Big Jim competition!

In the small plastic greenhouse at home we've much bigger toms than the unheated one on the plot, with our first fruit approaching ripeness! In fact, in pots at home the strawbs are growing well, the 4 heritage tatties we've got growing in containers all seem to be thriving, the cut n come again salad leaf we've been eating for about 3 weeks, and the herbs are doing great, I've been using them for about 3 weeks too, especially the chives and parsley!



This last piccy shows the minipop sweetcorn and pumpkins / squash (ghostrider and butternut) in the bed next to the greenhouse, with the brassicas just visible in the bed beyond (the one covered with netting).

In the bed behind the greenhouse you can see 2 rows of pickling onions and along the pea supports the peas that are growing through nicely!

The only areas we've struggled with are the asparagus bed, which has a total of 3 stalks that have shown, along with a mass of thistles and bindweed, methinks we are going to have to completely dig it out and start again with it, along with the herb bed next to it that also seems very full of thistle and bindweed (although there are 2 lovely foxgloves growing in there that we transplanted into it in the winter)! Other areas of the plot have lots of thistle, bindweed, mares tail and couch growing, along with plenty of annual weeds, but we are just about managing to stay on top of them by pulling up / digging / hoeing as we go along! Methinks we are going to be dealing with the perennial weeds for at least another year or so yet, not what we'd have liked after double digging the whole plot, but at least they are under control (sort of!)

All in all not bad so far for our first years growing! Neither of us can wait to taste the first meal totally produced from on the plot!