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....

Blogger's Seed Network

Patrick over on Bifurcated Carrots has for some time been promoting an idea of his to create a seed network.

The idea is simple, anyone who grows vegetables and then saves the seeds can exchange any spare seeds they may end up with.

The seed network is promoted by the individual growers and how the exchanges happen is entirely up to those growers.

I've only been growing vegetables for just a year now but am happy to say that I have received many seeds from seed savers in many parts of the world.  Patrick himself has been very generous with his support of my first attempts to grow things edible.

Sadly, at this time, I don't have any seeds to offer of my own, but I am now growing seed saved from last year's crop and hoping it will turn out ok.   If this happens then I shall happily participate by offering my own seeds as part of the network in the future.

More information on the Blogger's Seed Network is available from Patrick on his page Blogger's Seed Network.

For reasons I fully understand, Patrick has asked everyone concerned to make the list of participants widely known and so here is the list, taken from his page on 12th February 2009

Of course, Patrick is also offering a large selection of seeds, with more information on his page Blogger's Seed Network

The Seed Network

Here are links to other blogs or Internet sites who are participating and I am aware of:

Bifurcated Carrots (Amsterdam)

Ewa in the Garden (Poland)

Spade Work (UK)

Mas Du Diable (France)

Alternative Kitchen Garden Podcast or Fluffius Muppetus (UK)

MustardPlaster (UK)

Lusthof (Garden of Eden) (Belgium)

A Thinking Stomach (USA)

The Veggie Patch Re-imagined (Canada)

The Cats Tripe (UK)

Soilman (Leeks, trumpet lily hybrids and pure regale species) (UK)

CityGarden (Greece)

Bishop’s Homegrown (USA)

Braamekraal Farm (South Africa)

Bifurcated Carrots (Netherlands)

Urban Food Gardening (Ireland)

Worldwide Seed Trader (USA)

Grunt and Grungy’s Garden (Canada)

The Seed Ambassadors Project (USA)

Jardim com Gatos (Portugal)

Lowarth Brogh — Offering round courgette, anna schwarz winter squash, rainbow quinoa, mexican sour gherkin and maybe some black cherry tomato seed. Interested in anything used to the cold, and anything strange,exotic(and tasty-not asking for much!) (UK)

Gardening Fool (USA)

Agrarian Grrl’s Muse (Canada)

Crazytomato (Netherlands)

Paquebot (USA)

Saith Ffynnon Farm (UK)

Blue Ribbon Tomatoes (USA)

Daphne (flat leafed parsley and dill.  US addresses only) (USA)

Brown Envelope Seeds (Looking for trades!) (Ireland)

A Blog Called Fuggles (UK/EU addresses only) (UK)

The New Vegetable Plot

	The site before we started	One of the changes for 2009 is a new location for the vegetable plot. As you may recall, I started growing vegetables last year in a new plot I created, which then got expanded over the year.
	The first line of tiles defining the edge of the plot	The site I chose turned out to be less than ideal, being shaded for much of the time by trees, and even some of the deciduous trees, like the cherry and walnuts offered a lot of shade even in winter. So, this spring I am intending to plant into a completely new plot and preparations have begun. After a lot of discussion, I have decided to create beds which are about 7m x 1200mm.  I have found that 1200mm is a really good width for a bed as it is easy to reach the centre from either side making everything in the bed easily accessible.
	Quickly aligning tiles	I'm also now tending to start to think in terms of 1200mm squares for planting individual crops, so again, 1200mm wide beds are ideal.  In last year's garden I grew 1200mm squares of garlic, spring onions, leeks, broad beans, peas, red cabbage and strawberries, so this was the starting point for my thoughts about the new plot.
	Minimising the errors	I'm fortunate in that I have a sizable piece of land, not far from the house which is not shaded by any trees, and this where I have decided to locate the new plot. The piece is far bigger than I will ever manage as a vegetable garden but I have decided to create an extensive design and then bring into operation beds as and when I need them and am able to.  I still need to do some soil testing but at first look it appears that a lot of amendment will be needed as much of the land seems to consist of a fairly heavy clay.
	The first bed laid out	Having decided to go with this project, the first thing I did was to decide on a size of plot that will last me for several years.  As I said, the overall plot is bigger than I will manage this year but by knowing the eventual size, I can hopefully avoid having to move things too much in future years. Once that was decided I started to break iup the plot into individual beds and quickly came up with 7m x 1200mm beds as ideal.
	A quadrant bed	There is a path around every bed, 650mm wide, enough for a wheel barrow to be put down.  I have also threaded some paths which are 1500mm wide so that I can get my little tractor and trailer in to garden if I need to move big or bulky items. In the layout of the beds we considered such things as sunlight, prevailing winds, slope and frost, and proximity to things like water and compost.
	At the cross roads	Once I had a drawing of the bed layout and was happy that I had used the space to best advantage and also produced a versatile design that will stand for many years, I started to set out the bed on the ground. The size of the bed turned out to be about 1/3 of the piece of land I referred to earlier and I chose to divide the piece in to 3 and use the centre section. I then cut the grass in this area, keeping the cuttings for use in the soil amendment.
	The helping hand of machinery	Next came the marking out of the piece and the beds. We gave quite a bit of thought to our planting for 2009 at this point and decided to make the beds which were going to be planted and leave the rest fallow until such time as we were ready to progress further.
	UH OHH!!!	I have a load of old roofing tiles and these were pressed into service as markers for all the beds and paths. During all this planning, I also visited the local garden centre who, of course, had wonderful offers on both potatoes and asparagus, which were too good to be ignored, so these two items came home with us, defining the first two beds to be prepared.
	The end of the day.	In the end, the layout gives three beds in a row with 4 rows between the main tractor routes, and I decided to opt for preparing a half of this space with just 2 rows of 3 beds.   We also decided that we would include a circular seating area and a quadrant shaped bed in each corner. Laying the tiles was surprisingly time consuming but in the end we had all six beds and the seating area nicely defined in beautiful old Mediterranean Roman Canal tiles, as well as the outside edges and all four quadrants.

A Cold Frame

Kate, of Hills and Plains Seedsavers has been staying here for the past couple of weeks and has talked me into making extensive changes in the Kitchen Garden.

The first change was realised during last week when I finally finished the cold frame I have been building in time to put our new seedlings in.

You might notice that half of the top frame is not covered in glass but in a piece of plastic.  This is due to a discovery I made during the construction that glass doesn't normally bend or bounce, preferring to shatter into several pieces......   Sadly, the local glass merchant could only then offer me 2 or 4 mm thick glass and of course I need 3mm!!!!!

Kate keeps referring to this thing as a seed frame but I've always known it as a cold frame.  We used concrete building blocks which we then filled with sand, to give us some thermal mass, in the hope that the blocks will hold heat gained through the day to warm the frame through the night.

I've put in a maximum - minimum thermometer to record the temperatures and from day one we made a small  temperature gain over night of a couple of degrees.  I hope that gain will steadily increase as the weather improves and the blocks warm.

The frame now has a few things which I have over wintered in it and is ready to receive some new seedlings as soon as they are ready.