More preparations and first sowings

The best news of the week is that the indoor carrots are not only surviving, but thriving.

Live! LIIIIIIVVVE!!!

All the sprouts are now pointing straight up, as opposed to desperately lunging sideways towards the window for sunlight. That suggests that the sunshine lamp is performing as planned, which means two successful experiments in one. Plus, the possibility of tasty early carrots, which is kinda the aim of the game.

Buoyed by the fact that the rain and wind have eased off somewhat and so we're unlikely to need to gather up two of every animal in the near future, I've spent most of the weekend preparing for the new growing season.

The garden is structured around four main 1.25m² growing beds, which will be used for brassica (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc) this year which need a lot of nitrogen for the leafy growth. I could have just piled a tonne of artificial fertiliser on, but I found out about green manure last winter and thought I'd give it a go. Green manure is a winter-growing crop that covers the ground, suppresses weeds and takes nitrogen out of the air and fixes it in the ground for the next year. Once winter is done, you chop it down, dig it into the ground and it provides the nutrients for the next year's crop.

Bit cruel when you think about it - a crop that you raise for the sole purpose of killing it and mutilating its body.

Incidentally, if anyone is going to be doing any gardening that involves weeding amongst plants or features, I can thoroughly recommend acquiring a Dutch Hoe. One of my father's mottos when it comes to DIY is that it's always best to take the time to get the right tool for the job, instead of trying to bodge it with the almost-right tool, as you'll just end up having to get the right tool later after wasting a load of time. The same appears true in gardening. Weeding those field beans would've taken me a half hour with a trowel, yet took three minutes with a hoe.

In terms of things to put in those beds, the first seeds of the season have been sown and are sitting atop the boiler. First up are early cauliflowers and cabbage, which should in theory be ready for May, when the no-buying-of-vegetables-for-a-calendar-year challenge* begins.

 I bought special plant labels this year. They're made of slate and you write on them with a wax pen that will only come off with white spirit. The idea is that they're impervious to water, which makes them perfect for being outside. Not quite so good for the idiot who doesn't have any white spirit in the house and requires three attempts to draw the diagram on. Thank god I was only doing one.

I had a couple of spaces in the seed tray which I've filled with lettuce for my next project - vertical gardening.

PJW

*Needs a better name.

Sometimes, I'm not that bright

My last post featured two things - indoor carrots that were struggling from lack of sunlight and couldn't go outside because of the bad weather, and the new sunlight lamp that I'd built to help my seedlings along.

Somehow, I didn't connect these two together until today.

In case anyone's interested in what leggy, undersunlighted seedlings look like, here's the carrots today. Hopefully they'll recover, while also providing a valuable test case to see if the sunlight lamp actually works.

Up == Light, right? Right?

I genuinely can't believe that I didn't realise this before.

PJW

The end of the world in fire and water

The first bit of news is that I have indoor carrots growing!

Need a magnifying glass? I swear they're there.

This is wonderful, as I'd given up on them and gives me the possibility that I may be able to harvest them at the start of April. However, this very much depends on the weather - the half of the experiment that was outside in the plastic greenhouse died a death due to the wind physically removing the greenhouse and tipping the pot over, so I think putting anything this small and fragile outside is asking for trouble while the UK weather forecast still reads "Götterdämmerung."

On the flip side, the plan had been only to keep them inside until they started sprouting, as they don't get much sunlight where they are. I think I'll make a decision after the weekend - given that the wind has managed to rip a wooden post out of a wall and bean me across the head with it; I'd like it to calm down before I put any of my new-grown treasures out in it.

Of course, the current weather also means that all of the preparation work that I spent last month doing for the vegetable garden is in danger of travelling to Oz and setting up a benevolent dictatorship there. The brassica net cages are wired very firmly onto walls, the bottom 6" is buried in the soil and there are bamboo canes acting as struts for all the corners. So far, only one of the four is still standing. I'm hoping the wires have broken, rather than the nets themselves.

I have managed to do one exciting bit of preparation indoors, which is the new seed trays for growing my vegetable seedlings, complete with a sunlight lamp.

Not pictured - the windpocalypse outside

 

Last year, I got a bit overexcited with the idea of planting seeds and started around this time of the year. I revelled in the little green sprouts, and made all sorts of detailed plans about when I was going to put them outside and then was well and truly scuppered by the fact that snow lasted all the way through March.

A valuable note about seedlings on windowsills - they're not very tolerant of not getting much light. A seedling's very simple idea of the world is up = light, light = up. Therefore, if I haven't enough light, then I need more up. There's no use explaining to them that up won't help and that light is hidden behind the horrible slate grey clouds and that they're already on the best windowsill in the house for what little light there is. I'd woken them up and they were going to keep growing till they had enough light dammit.

I ended up having to put the gangly poor things out of their misery when they reached 4 inches long and relied mostly on shop-bought seedlings that year.

This year, I'm hoping to cheat with technology. Indoor lighting normally does nothing for plants, as the light that they give off is a) too weak and b) the wrong colour, being tilted more towards the reds and yellows of the spectrum. This bulb gives 4300 lumen in the same light spectrum as the sun, which involves more blue light which is the one that plants photosynthesise from. In theory, in close proximity to the seedlings, it should be enough to help them alongside the sunlight from the window.

Building the lamp itself was a challenge - I started with a cheap clip-on socket for £2.99 and came up with the plan of clipping it to the window catch. This worked fine until the bulb arrived - it's about as long as my forearm and quite heavy. It wouldn't physically fit into the socket until I cut some of the plastic away and then when it did, it wasn't keen on staying horizontal without support.

One jury-rigged bracket from scrap wood later...

The reflector frame is made out of a wire coathanger, a cardboard box, tin foil, some gardening wire and prayer. There is no adjusting of it - it took me three hours and a great number of swear words to get it into place, and another hour after that to put it back together after I "just move this slightly"ed and the whole thing fell apart. It works though - the light is reflected back down with enough force that you don't want to look directly at it when it's on.

No doubt it will encourage my seedlings to grow beautifully, right up until the point it comes loose and crushes them like the hand of a temperamental deity.

The first seeds are sown next weekend - early cauliflower and cabbage. Looking forward to growing again.

PJW

What's happened in January

January's been mostly a garden month of very hard work and nothing much interesting. Apart from the vegetable garden, we also have the "pretty" garden, which has gone through a major redesign from a ricketty, falling down fence, overgrown hedge and weed filled beds to this:

Lots of digging, lots of hefting of heavy stones, almost an entire day up a ladder trimming the hedge gets me the reward of an extra foot all the way around the garden and the place looking like a bomb's hit it. I'm reliably informed by my parents, who helped the transformation, that the hedge will green up and the grass will grow back. I don't tend to know much about non-food gardening, so I'll take their word for it.

In the interesting garden, the experiment with the early carrots appears to've been an utter failure. Not even a sniff of a seedling, which is a shame. I'll keep the pots wrapped up for a bit longer in case they suddenly sprout forth when the weather turns, but I'm not holding out much hope.

I have received most of my seed potatoes through the post and they're now out chitting so they'll grow quicker when they're planted in March.

 

First Earlies, Early Maincrops and Maincrops - my Second Earlies are still in the post. Think I might have enough seed potatoes?! The pot on the far right hand side is the indoor carrots, resolutely not sprouting for the camera.

Next year is going to be much more interesting, as I plan to still be harvesting at this point. Spinach, kale, brussel sprouts and leeks will be available with luck, as well as living off the stores of potatoes and jerusalem artichokes. It's the dream that keeps me going.

Oh, and that diagram of the garden that I drew, with all the carefully planned beds, pots and growing areas? Already out of date. The garden has expanded to fill the available (and unavailable) space again, with a new 1m x 1m bed planned for more green beans (and to allow room for crop rotation next year) and three extra potato bags (there was a special offer). Wife is tolerating the further expansion, as long as it doesn't encroach into the pretty garden. I guess one could make a case that the borders of the pretty garden aren't that well defined and I could probably fit another bed into a corner where she'd barely even notice it...

The plans for next month - more digging, first growing of seedlings for cabbage and cauliflower and the planting of jerusalem artichoke tubers.

PJW

How to play along at home, part 1 - PO-TA-TOES!

The most annoying thing about a convert is the zeal with which they try and get you to join them. Try talking to anyone who's still in the honeymoon phase of going to the gym about how you're struggling with your fitness and they'll be ready, eager and keen to sign you up, full of helpful suggestions about how you could come with them, there's a class that you'd just love and you'd feel so much better! You rarely get the hardsell from a long-time gym member, but you'll always get it from the person who's been going for 3-9 months and is pleasantly surprised to find that they're enjoying themselves.

It's hard to blame them really. It's a sign they like you - they're enjoying themselves and they want to to be happy too. And it's so easy now that they're in the swing of it!

With that example in mind, forgive me.

While I appreciate that very few people have the space, time, energy or obsessive personality to build a vegetable garden quite as daunting as mine, it is very easy and very rewarding to do something small. A couple of well-placed pots or a windowsill could allow you to turn dirt into food, with very little effort or cost. Quite apart from the satisfaction of eating something you killed yourself, the vegetables you get will taste better as they've not travelled and are fresh from the ground.

So, I've decided to write up some of the easiest and tastiest vegetables that I've accomplished, at the appropriate time of the year for my loyal reader(s) to try it themselves if they so wish.

Vegetable the first - potatoes

Five reasons to grow potatoes at home:
1) They taste better than any potato you will ever get from a supermarket or farmer's market
2) Potatoes are the easiest thing in the world to grow - they don't require a bed, fiddly little seeds or any knowledge whatsoever. All you have to do is put a little potato into some dirt, water it every now and again and from it will grow a plant that makes more potatoes.
3) They don't need much space, or sunlight, or anything. More sunlight is always better, but you can grow them anywhere.
4) You get a good return for not a huge outlay. Three bags, which take up approx 3ft² space will provide you with about 40 potatoes for an initial outlay of £20, but you can reuse the compost* and bags again next year (*compost may require a dose of inexpensive fertiliser next year). That means you'd just have to buy new seed potatoes, which would be about £2-£3 per year.
5)

Potatoes grow from other potatoes - if you've ever forgotten a bag in a kitchen cupboard and come back to spindly white tendrils, then you've accidentally a potato plant. It's best not to plant supermarket potatoes though, as they tend to be bred for eating and transport, not creating a new generation. You can get seed potatoes like these online, but you might find it cheaper (and more fun) to go down to a garden centre/Homebase and look through the varieties yourself. There are two main types: Earlies, planted from end of February and can be harvested from May onwards; and Maincrop, which are planted March and are harvested July/August onwards. Earlies are usually "new potato" types, while maincrops are bigger and more useful for chips, roasties, etc.

You often get seed potatoes delivered in January/February, as it's a good idea to chit them before you put them in the ground. Chitting just means leaving them in a cool, bright position, usually in an old egg box, so that they can get the light and start sprouting sprouts. It's not essential to do this step, but it will speed up your harvest.

People think of potatoes as being something grown in the earth and dug for, but the easiest way to grow them is in a bag on a patio or other hard surface.You can get a specially designed bag like this one for only £2.99 on Amazon, but you can also recycle an old compost bag if you have one/live anywhere near me and want to cadge one. I've got dozens going spare, so feel free. The only rules for the bag are that it has to have some holes in the bottom to drain water and that it has to be relatively opaque. Potatoes that see sunlight while they're in the ground are bad for you, so no clear tubs, bags or boxes.

All you need do is roll the edges of your bag down so that it's only about 1-2 ft high and pour in a thick layer of compost. Put in three seed potatoes on the compost, equidistant from one another and with the sprouting bits pointing up, and cover them up with another layer of compost. Water them twice a week or whenever the earth seems dry - a surprising amount of edible potato is water, so best to keep them too damp than too dry.

In time, you will end up with three bushy green plants poking up through the soil. When they are about 1.5ft high, roll up the edge of the bag so that it's now as tall/slightly taller than the plant and then pour more compost on top of the plants until all but the top few leaves are covered. Yes, this will feel like you're murdering the plant that you worked so hard to make happen. However, we're not interested in the green bit; we're interested in the potatoey-goodness of the roots and the deeper the dirt, the more room there is for spuds.

The plants will recover from the indignity of being earthed up and will valiantly create another 1.5ft of foliage again. Teach them that life is cruel, roll up the edges of the bag to make it deeper and pour more compost on, again leaving the top few leaves uncovered.

Rinse and repeat until the bag is fully unrolled and as tall as it can get and the compost is a few inches from the top. The potatoes will revel in their freedom and create a bushy top of green bits and sometimes flowers to celebrate. Ignore this; they're just showing off.

What you're waiting for is for the green bits to start dying. Yes, it's a plant that signals when it's done by going yellow and falling over - how great is that?! Once that happens, your potatoes are just about ready. You don't need to dig them up immediately - you can leave them in the bags for several months and it won't make the slightest difference to them. Some of mine last year stayed in the bags for 6 months without any effect.

All you need do is cut off and remove the dying greeny bits and dig through your compost, looking for spuds. It's quite a good idea to save the bag that the compost came in and then you can pour it back in bit by bit and remove the potatoes as you see them. As I mentioned earlier, everything can be reused next year with a little bit of extra fertiliser.

If anyone in and around Bath is interested in trying this, there is a good chance that I will have a couple of seed potatoes and some usable bags that will be open to good homes. Apply below if you want to give potatoes a try.

PJW

Beginnings and experiments - January carrots

The first seeds have been sown.

You're not supposed to sow vegetable seeds in January as a rule - too cold, too damp, not enough sun and any gardener who gets overenthused and sows too early will get nothing but disappointment and sickly seedlings that are starved of sunlight. I know this mostly cause I did it last year, but it's very hard not to. Winter's back is broken, the sun's coming out again (in patches) and the month of January is filled with preparation of beds, acquiring of compost and planning of where everything's going to go. All of the seed packets you ordered have arrived and it's very hard not to jump the gun and get right down to it in the hope that the weather will have picked up by the time you come to plant out, right?

I'm attempting to stop myself from giving in this year by giving in in a very controlled fashion and experimenting with indoor carrots.

Carrots are supposed to germinate at 10⁰C, but air temperatures outside at the moment are wavering from freezing to a max of 11⁰C, which is far from ideal. Quite apart from that, soil temperatures in the ground and raised beds won't warm up for at least a month without help. So my theory goes that maybe if you plant them in pots, in an area that will always be >10⁰C, you might be able to trick them into thinking that it's February/March (when you're supposed to plant them). Our baby daughter is going to be looking to try out solid food for the first time in a month or so and it would be lovely if we could start her with some homegrown carrot.

I've got two experiments on the go at once for this. The first is inside my raggedy plastic greenhouse thing, which in theory should trap heat and lead to a warmer air temperature than that outside. This works in theory and would probably work a lot better if the plastic greenhouse weren't riddled with holes. We live on top of a very steep hill and when the wind blows, it howls, so the plastic greenhouse has been wired down in several different ways since it was bought last year and each tiny hole for wiring has allowed erosion to eat away at the plastic cover. Frankly, I'm a little dubious as to how insulating it might be compared to, say, a colander, but it's all I have at the moment. The pot is swaddled in bubble wrap as an insulator and hopefully it'll be slightly warmer than if it were just outside.

The second is actively indoors, on a table near a window. This has the advantage of being guaranteed to be above 10⁰C, but the disadvantage of not getting a brilliant amount of light. We don't have any south facing windows in our house (being semi-detached) and growing things on windowsills has proven a challenge before. My hope is that carrots don't need a huge amount of sunlight in their early days and that the weather will pick up enough/they'll grow strong enough for me to put the pot outside before they suffer too much.

In theory, it should work. Maybe there's a reason that back garden gardeners don't grow carrots inside and maybe I'll find out, but as for now, it's an adventure and it's saved me from the urge to plant anything else too early.

PJW

A new (growing) year's resolution

Or - The Challenge!

The whole thing has just gone horribly out of control and, worst of all, it's looking feasible. It's a larger garden, but it's significantly better planned than before and keeping all the brassica under nets should in theory mean a massive reduction in pest-control time and a much greater amount eaten by me rather than the local wildlife.

This brings us to the current situation. Whilst there is great satisfaction in the work itself, the main payoff was being able to sit down to a roast dinner and say that everything not meat on that plate came from the sweat off my brow (not literally). Don't think I haven't had to talk myself out of keeping chickens to complete the plate either!

Not having to buy a vegetable for the second half of last year was phenomenally satisfying and, as I watched this monstrous time-sink take shape, I decided to see how far I could stretch it. By my calculations, with prudent planting, veg choice, storage and freezing, I could possible go the whole year without buying a single vegetable. "Could possibly" has since turned into "will" as I love a challenge and frankly, I'm a little bit drunk with power. I've put things in the ground and they've made food. On a semi-regular basis. That's one step away from omnipotence as far as the 2012 me of "Probably a nettle" is concerned.

So, the challenge is that from May 2014 to April 2015, we will buy no fresh vegetables at all, apart from the following exceptions: onions, garlic, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce*. I will aim to have emptied out my freezer and cupboards of any non-excluded tinned or frozen veg before May, so I can have a go at complete self-sufficiency**  *** ****.

This blog is going to be one part journal and one part collating all the knowledge that I've picked up already and the new informations that my mistakes will inevitably lead to blunder into. If anyone does start reading this and have any requests, I have actually learned a lot already and am happy to share. Or you can just come to mock my pain, either way.

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

PJW

* I will actually be attempting to grow all of these. However, I've failed in varying degrees at all of them last year and the first four are such staples of my cooking that I couldn't bear trying to survive it I fail again. If my cabbages don't come through, I'll live. If I don't have any onions or tomatoes, I'll starve.
** Apart from my need for copious amounts of animal flesh
*** And my unhealthy addiction to Diet Coke
****  And the unholy amounts that I will need to spend on compost and other assorted dirts. I've been running a compost heap since last year, but it's a thimbleful in the ocean of dirt needed to keep up with my expanding garden.