Growing dogs by the moon

Dog Bean, now there’s a silly name for a seed. I mean, Dog Bean, like we think it’s going to grow up into a dog?

Anyway, I was given some dog bean seeds the other day. They are an heirloom dwarf French bean. It got me round to thinking about how seeds and plants get their names and what other names we might conjure up.

I mean dog bean , well, not much imagination there. If it’s a dwarf French bean and it needed to be called after a dog surely, French Poodle bean would have fitted better. After all, French Poodles are pretty dwarf but oh so showy!!!!

And then I thought about some flowers. I’ve got foxgloves growing - and I thought dog bean was silly!! Fox gloves! Have you ever seen a fox wearing gloves? And why would he? Monsieur Renard, your gants? I don’t think so!

Now as you know, I’m trying to follow the moon planting guidelines this year and am generally planting things on the correct day. This has proved a challenge on more than one occasion.

Take a lettuce, we need to produce leaves so we plant lettuces on a "leaf plant day". Now leaf plant days come around about every 8 to 10 days and usually there are two together.

So you have 2 days to sow your lettuce seeds.

Then 8 days later they are not really ready to pot on so you wait. By 12 days they are climbing the walls but you have to wait till 16 days before you can pot them on.

Another 8 days and they really aren’t ready to plant out so you wait another 8 days. 32 days after sowing they really still aren’t quite ready to go out into the big wide world so you wait again. Another 8 days. This is looking good, 40 days old and they are a nice size to plant out, they’ve even been hardened off ready.

Planting day arrives but it’s the one day this week we are not at home! Never mind tomorrow is ok. Tomorrow comes and it’s raining. When I say raining, I’m talking full blown Mediterranean raining.

It doesn’t rain much here but when it does then it makes up for it. Aquitaine was apparently named after the amount of rain that fell and it is still falling. So it’s raining and you wait for a dry spell, and you wait, and you wait and you wait.

As you are eating lunch you at last notice that the rain has stopped but by the time you can get the plants and get out into the garden the next deluge has started. If you planted in this the little plants would float away.

So forlornly you go back indoors and wait another 8 days – and exactly the same thing happens again!

So you check the charts for the following day and it says "Today is a good day for planting fruiting plants but would not be a good day for planting leaf plants".

You swear under your breath and plant them anyway, quietly telling your friends that you’re following the lunar cycle but occasionally you’re a day or two behind!

So that was my experience with lettuce. Oh and that rain. 30mm (about an inch and a quarter) of rain fell during daylight hours!!!!

Then came the strawberries.

This was going to be much easier. I had bought plants from a local nursery so all I needed was the right day to plant them out.

Strawberries, easy, a fruit plant, right?

But hang on! The Royal Horticultural Society, no less, advised me to plant the strawberries but not to let fruit set for the first year to encourage strong root growth.

So, I’m looking for root growth not fruit? Does that mean I should plant on a fruit day to get good fruit, or - on a root day to get good root growth?

Difficult question.

I threw it into one of the online gardening communities I belong to and caused some discussion. The advice came back that perhaps I should plant out between the fruiting plant day and the root plant day.

This was so simple! I had the answer. I just needed to check the appropriate days and then Presto!

Plant Fruiting Plants on Tuesday great,! Now root plants , oh here they are Plant Root Plants on Wednesday!

At long last I have now discovered what planting by the moon really means. At midnight, between Tuesday and Wednesday I was out in the garden, planting my little strawberry plants by the light of the moon.

Ian

Thanks for the help!

Recently, I was given my first heirloom bean seeds which I have sown in a new small bed immediately behind my "potager" beds. When I planned my veg garden I was unaware that these seeds would be given to me so I didn’t allow any room for them . However, I was very happy to pull out a small shrub and thereby release another small bed for vegetables. I had intended to show a photo of the seedlings today but alas, they are too small to photograph. They are being protected by cut down soda bottles which is a system I like to use.

Elsewhere in the garden, things are starting to happen. My potatoes are well established now and this week needed to be hoed up.

As I was growing them in a new bed, I decided to simply add a couple of bags of compost and raise the bed level a little further.



You may remember that due to a lack of familiarity with the French language I inadvertently bought red cabbage plants instead of white – (they actually call them apple cabbages here in France!). Well, as you can see the cabbages are doing well.





I have also bought tomato plants which are in position growing in pots against a south facing wall. I have three varieties, Marmande - a local beef tomato variety, cerise rouge, literally red cherry and golden sunrise, a yellow cherry tomato. The photo is of the Golden Sunrise Tomato which I have raised from seed!!!! They are still quite small but I remain hopeful


Back in March I bought a dozen strawberry plants, 6 of a variety called Marais du Bois and 6 of another French variety called Gariguette. They are now establishing themselves nicely. I bought some Gariguette strawberries on the market last Saturday and they were wonderfully tasty and oh, so juicy


During the past month or so I have received a lot of help getting my seed sowing attempts sorted out after several false starts.

I think this batch of salad leaves will actually be successful. (Sorry about the quality of the photo - I’m still doing battle with digital cameras, as well as seeds!)

The picture shows 16 of 24 cells. The 8 that are missing are Batavia lettuce which have already been potted on, the next 8 are wild chicory which I'm trying for the first time and the last 8 are lollo rosso lettuce.

I’d like to thank Patrick – over at Bifurcated Carrots for his invaluable help in diagnosing where I was going wrong and for continuing to offer encouragement when things looked very bleak.



Thank you Patrick

So, as you can see I have made a bit of progress since I started back in January. I feel a bit like the tomato I wrote about some months ago Who'd be a Tomato: I got on and did the job and now I deserve a pat on the back! Of course my tomato didn't get a pat on the back!! I'm hoping my pat on the back will come in the form of some superb mediteranean weather to help all these little upstarts grow into magnificent specimens. I'm not holding my breath though - we had almost 50mm (2 inches) of rainfall last week!!!!