Grow Your Own Magazine

Well it's been a while so here's what's been happening.
Bad news first ! Think I may lose my french beans to Sclerotinia - this is doubly annoying as they were beginning to produce beans all over the place. I have also lost several hundred cabbages to the pigeons - that'll teach me to be too fussy about weed control - tried to make the place look pterry but all I did was let the pigeons see them more clearly !!
Cucumbers are going bananas (if that's possible) The largest of the rows...

sewer rat

Well, in spite of everything that the wether has or hasn't thrown our way so far this year, I should be starting to harvest soon - am already on third crop of lettuces with the next batch of 150 ready to be planted at the weekend, My cucumbers have fairly raced away this week - now have flowers and two to three inch cukes on three of the rows and the remaining four rows are catching up quickly. French Bean Blue Lake is hitting the top of the 8ft canes and is now travelling along the crop bars and...

sewer rat

What veg are you growing this year, so I listed it all for her and here it is. Some are in the ground, some are in the tunnel, but this is only what has been put in to date
Onions - Sturon- 7500
Red Onions -7500
Potatoes - Lady Christl - 25kg seed tubers
Potatoes - Charlotte - 25kg seed tubers
Potatoes - Red Duke of York - 20kg seed tubers
J/Artichokes - Gerard - 25kg tubers
Cabbage - Minicole - 960
Cabbage - Hispi - 920
Cabbage - Primo...

sewer rat

And about bloody time too - my outdoor crops were on the point of giving up the ghost !!
So an update - tunnel now has french beans, early cabbage, swiss chard, various lettuce, cukes and runner beans in the bed, calabrese, more lettuce, culinary herbs, sprouts, spinach, winter cabbage, savoy cabbage, red kale, green kale and Black Tuscan Kale plugs as well as approx 6000 baby leeks on the staging. In addition I have 60 hanging baskets with starwbs, which are rapidly ripening - I have to...

sewer rat

So what's new since I last wrote ?
Well I had my first two days off since Feb 2007 - went to a wedding over in Belfast - ace craic !
On the veg front, the tunnel floor is rapidly filling with growing cabbages, french beans, cukes, and there are lettuces in every available nook and cranny. The strawbs in the hanging baskets are going great guns too.I still have a lot of calabrese of my own to plant out, some caulis, sprouts, calabrese and lettuce for the local Garden Centre to pot on...

sewer rat