Sunday 14 April 2013

Peas, Beans, Beet and Carrot all planted out!

Last weekend I didn't get much done in the garden because it was my parent's 70th birthday, but that's worth mentioning here, because it's quite an age to reach. Although both have suffered ill health and my father has only recently had heart surgery, we made it out for a little family meal, minus my sister's family because she was ill .


It's not warm yet, but with the temperature above freezing for the last few nights and the peas and beans beginning to flower indoors, I've decided to start spring myself. Today I planted out the peas, French beans, beetroot and carrot seedlings into the raised bed. After that I sowed some seed (spinach, more peas, assorted salad leaves, salsify, parsley and basil) directly into the raised beds in the hope that it will be warm enough for them to germinate outdoors.

It's supposed to be quite warm tonight (10 degrees celsius) so it's the ideal first night outside for the plants. I've been gradually hardening them off by putting them outside so that it won't be too much of a shock. Unfortunately the slightly warmer weather has brought stronger wind so I've had to put a fleece over the French beans tonight as they have big leaves and are more likely to get damaged.

The peas and beans who started life on my bedroom windowsill are now outside at last!

You may have noticed that I haven't sown a huge number of plants in one go. This is because I've decided to aim for:
1) Successional sowings rather than one big planting. By planting a new batch of seeds every month, there will be no gluts and a longer season of produce
2) Variety, I want to plant more than twenty different crops this year (some being new to me and unsusual too) and so will have a smaller number of each sort.

To help protect the new plants from slug, snail and insect attack and hopefully also from marauding cats who use the beds as a litter tray, I've made a garlic spray. This is easy enough to do with a few cloves of garlic cut up and crushed into water and left to marinate. It smells very strong, let's hope it works!

Rain our cat, has been asked to guard the garden and not use the raised beds as a litter tray!
 
The purple sprouting broccoli is coming on well and will soon be ready to harvest. I've enclosed it in a cage of netting this year to prevent cabbage white butterflies from laying their eggs on it. Last year it was completely decimated by them and they ate all the nasturtium too. This year it's our turn to have some broccoli!



Last week there was an unusual bird visitor to the peanut feeder. It was a very hungry male Siskin which stayed for ages on the feeder, so I got to take quite a lot of photos. This was probably a bird that was migrating to breeding grounds as they winter here but they don't breed here. It may have been heading for Scotland or Northern parts of Europe, but it had a good fill of peanuts before leaving!

I also have a photo of House Sparrows sunbathing from last weekend. They had just taken a dust bath on what was probably the most spring like day we've had. That's the life! I also made the most of the sun that day by cleaning my car, it wasn't quite warm enough for me to sunbathe! It was still very cold at night at that point with frosts almost every night.

It's late at night now and it is raining, but so far at least, the wind hasn't been too bad. It's time for me to take a book to read in bed as my feet are cold. Goodnight :O)


2 comments:

  1. I would NOT want to mess with your cat :)

    I love that picture of the Siskin. I don't think I've ever seen one of them!!

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  2. Yes Rain can be a bit of a curmudgeon! Not sure if there are Siskin in the US or perhaps they have a different name there. There are certainly lots of birds there that we don't have.

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