The First Planting

I'm in the process of making a completely new vegetable plot for this year and was pleased on Sunday when the first plant got put in the ground.

The plot has several beds, all about the same size and I have worked out a planting schedule for this year.  One of the beds, on the west side, is dedicated to berries and it was in this bed that I planted the first new bush I had bought.    During a visit to a garden centre at the end of last week, I found some fruit bushes which had been reduced as a result of storm damage during the recent hurricane.  There were bare rooted fruit trees and some container grown bushes, all reduced.     I bought three fruit trees and a redcurrant bush.

On Sunday, I planted the redcurrant bush in the berries bed, a peach tree to the south of the plot and a pear and a plum in the same hole in another part of the garden where, eventually, I want a little shade. The garden centre actually told me that the plum tree would pollinate the pear tree, but I don't know if this is correct....   It could be that the man was mistaken... or it could be that I misunderstood what he was saying whilst translating from French to English!!!!!

I also bought some Asparagus crowns and spent Monday preparing a permanent bed for them.

Seed potatoes are chitting in the windowsill in my workshop and the rest of Monday was spent in preparing another bed for potatoes

In the new cold frame we have Ching Chiang Pai Tsai (a kind of Bok Choy), Joy's Cos Lettuce, Lollo Rosso Lettuce, Batavia Lettuce all coming along as well as some herbs.  I have not grown Bok Choy before so this is part of my response to the Growing Challenge

Overnight temperatures are still dropping down to around -3C or -4C(25 - 27F) and it's proving difficult to maintain the temperature inside the cold frame above 0C  (32F)...  But it is called a cold frame after all!!   I'm trying to line it each night with some insulation material left over from some recent work carried out on the property.

Last year I saved some seeds from a red cherry tomato that I grew and particularly liked.   I was rather disappointed to see that they had got damp over the winter and gone a bit mouldy but then dried again. I sowed them anyway and was delighted to see the first shoots appearing.

 

Many of you will remember that Kate is staying here with me at the moment and as you can see, she is helping a great deal with the layout and organisation of the new plot.  It was at her insistence that a seating area was included in the plan....

The Predator becomes friendly helping hand.

True life has an uncanny way of following fiction or I suppose the fact is that fiction is really a reflection on true life.

Some months ago I wrote about the life of a tomato Who’d be a tomato. In that story I talked about the predator becoming the helping hand.

As I knew it would, true life has emulated what I wrote and now, I find myself lavishing loving attention on the seven tomato plants that have been allowed to survive thus far.

The three on the left are Marmande, a local variety of big tasty beef tomatoes, then there are 2 golden sunrise and two cerise rouge – simply red cherry!

The Marmande are a big brute of a tomato and as you can see, they are set to become the playground bully on this bit of my domain.

I decided to grow the tomatoes in pots this year as I had filled up the beds I prepared and previously, in the UK, my father in law always grew tomatoes in pots in the greenhouse.

The lack of room in my beds also prompted me to grow my carrots in a container. On a couple of the gardening social networks to which I belong, there has been a great deal of discussion about container growing, and my friend ilex over at:

Homesteading in a Condo

has been an inspiration to me. The other fact I learnt, only recently, is that the carrot root fly can only fly below 20 inches (500mm) above the ground, so, by putting my carrots in this container and raising it up on a shelf the pot is higher than root fly can get!!!!

I’ll tell you in a few weeks whether it worked or not!

Elsewhere things are growing well and I’m feeding most of the French population of snails, slugs and rabbits. Just occasionally, I even manage to pick something for myself.

Rabbits ate the basil and I’m not sure it is going to recover. I thought it might but it has been transferred to the ICU and the prognosis is not good.

In the orchard there is a sad face on the fruitless cherry trees and the plums are also looking short of fruit. I have plenty of apples though and some walnuts are beginning to form. It does look however, that this year will bear a poor orchard crop for us, with no cherries, no pears and no plums. It’s too early to say about the figs, but the tree has been disturbed as this was the first year of pruning after many years of neglect.