Bountiful Harvest

As usual, it's been a long time since my last post. Over the last few months, the garden has been slowly working away. Currently I have several waves of new leeks coming up, and just harvested the very last leek from the winter crop. I've begun a rotation of spring onion seedlings in pots, planting the most mature ones and potting new seeds on a four week schedule.

Celery and carrots are growing, and lettuces are suddenly all maturing at once. I've been harvesting from the first swedes over the last few weeks – they are tender and flavoursome, with an odour you don't get from the dried-out supermarket specimens.

Cabbages are slowly starting to gain ground, and I just harvested the first one yesterday. I had to strip a lot of the outer leaves because I haven't been using pesticides on the garden, so it's been chewed on a little.

The potato tops have started to die off, so I'll be pulling those out in a few weeks. One of the plants has already died off completely, so I dug up a handful of spuds.

I also pulled up our largest swede so far. Tonight, if the potatoes are OK for Annette's diet, I'm hoping to make steak and three veg using all home-grown vegetables!

Father's Day

I received a few Father's Day cards from my niece Liana while she was growing up, since her dad died when she was little. But today, I got my first Step-Father's Day card from Maddy.

So now I can officially call myself "Maddy's stepfather", instead of "Maddy's sort-of stepfather."

Seed Raising Mix

I bought some seed raising mix to help the new season's crops along. After some lacklustre performance with spring onions, I decided to test the mix against dirt taken from our garden. I planted an equal number of seeds in identical containers, and provided them with the same amount of water and sunshine.

Spring OnionsLeft: Dirt from our back yard.   Right: Amgrow Seed Raising Mix.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference for the spring onions, but the ones in dirt came up a lot quicker and are slightly more mature.

Swedes: Dirt from our back yard.

Swedes: Amgrow Seed Raising Mix.

The swede pictures really speak for themselves, though.

Looks like I won't be needing any more seed raising mix!

The Empire Expands

First post in a while! I've been so busy doing things that I haven't had the time to write about them!

It's the start of Spring, so the garden I prepared in the Autumn is about to swing into high gear! I was going to turn over the beds of Winter veggies, but +Annette encouraged me to open up some new beds and put more of the back yard to productive use.

The green bit in the middle is the original patch!

The Winter crop of leeks and spring onions has been providing a small yield, and rather than pull them all up at once I'll harvest leeks as we need them. The garlic seems to be doing well, and I'm just keeping an eye on it to see when it starts to wilt on top.

I realised that I should have spring onions on a regular rotation, so I've started planting a little box each week. After four weeks or so, I'll transplant the oldest box into the garden.

A month or so back, I opened up a new couple of beds for potatoes. Just about all of them have shown themselves above ground, and most seem to be going strong! I also extended some of the old beds and put in swedes and cabbage. The cabbages are doing so-so. The swedes, after a worrying delay germinating, are going strong now - as long as I can keep the snails and slugs from eating them!

Having decided not to turn over the old beds yet, I had to scramble last week to open up some more room for new crops. I started digging up the back corner, but since the soil was rich with compost it was choked with weeds and roots. I dug a 1m x 1m bed, and have planted some celery, lettuce, and carrot seeds.

At the front of the photo, I made a larger bed from the lawn that was in front of the raspberry patch. This has more celery and three rows of leeks; I'll add more leeks along the bed in a few weeks.

I also have a few planter boxes of swedes, celery, leeks, and cabbages going. These are a sort-of backup in case the direct-planted stuff has a hard time of it. And if not, I'll be able to transplant them anyway and get a larger crop.

It's turning into a regular little home garden. I'm pleased that we're finally starting to get some usable leeks and spring onions, and am looking forward to many more things to come.

Paw Cookie

Yesterday evening I made some choc chip cookies (from the recipe on the back of the Cadbury's packet). I was just about to bite into one, when I noticed this:

Pawprint!

Then I remembered we shut Serenity in the bedroom because he was a pain while I was cooking dinner and wanted to eat all the chicken!

Maybe it's a sign, because the Strays Kickstarter launched this morning; I've been doing fuzzy animal art for this Fate Accelerated roleplaying game, including the cover illustration!

First Harvest

Things have been growing pretty slowly in the garden patch, partly because it's Winter and partly because I didn't buy any fertiliser for the first couple of months.

I took some pictures a few weeks back, but didn't get around to uploading them until now. Here's the initial patch; it's mostly leeks, with a few spring onions. I also planted some garlic cloves, which have really taken off! Some of the leeks are starting to look impressive, but they either have a long way to go still, or they're going to end up the same size as large spring onions.

I've also turned over a new patch, in preparation for the Spring planting season.

Today I reaped my first harvest - a whole two spring onions! These are from the Red Legs seedlings I planted when the garden first went in. I took the two largest, which were a decent size but not huge, and left the others to grow a bit more.

Steak knife for scale

Tonight for dinner, we had Atlantic salmon with poached egg on toast, garnished with our spring onions! I forgot to take a picture before I started eating it... Very tasty, but I overcooked the egg a little.

Breaking New Ground

In an effort to help the household budget, I've started work on a garden patch.

So far I've taken a hoe to it to break up the grass, dug up three deeply embedded leafy weeds, turned it all over with a garden fork (which also involved pulling out a whole network of long ropey roots), sprinkled some aged compost over it, and soaked it all with the hose.

Because of +Annette's food requirements, we're fairly limited in the crops we can usefully plant. It's a bit late in the season, but we're going to start off trying some leeks and spring onions. As the months pass, we'll add more stuff as it comes into season.

I've never been much of a gardener, so this is a whole new exercise for me. I still need to figure out stuff like fertiliser and pest control, and no doubt dozens of things I've never even thought of. But I have the Yate's Garden Guide, so hopefully my first foray into food production won't be a complete disaster!