MY WEEK : 1 ( 1ST JANUARY )

Happy New Year to everyone, I hope that you have all had a good start to 2007.
My allotments are looking ok at the moment, I was surprised when I paid them a visit earlier in the week that there had not been any damage from the strong gales we have experienced recently. I could tell how mild the Winter has been so far as there has been some weed growth which you can see from this photograph, there were still Whitefly in the air which is not a very good sign for next year as unless we have a proper Winter spell they will still be around in great numbers at the start of the growing season. The Rhubarb crowns are showing signs of shooting, there tips are poking up through the mulch that I gave them back in late Autumn, there are buds forming on the fruit bushes and fruit trees which I hope do not emerge too early as they could be damaged quite badly if we have a cold spell.

The Garlic is still looking strong and is starting to put a bit of growth on, the Purple Sprouting still looks healthy and it should not be too long before it begins cropping as I have seen some for sale at our local Farmer's Market this week.

My Celery is still going, infact they are surprisingly tender still it's a shame that it is not really salad eating weather, but they are delicious in soups and even braised in a bit of chicken or vegetable stock. At home the first of my Camelia's has started to bloom and looks stunning especially when we do have a bit of sunshine on them.

This week I have added a link to my Crop Sowing & Planting Guide for 2007, this is a list of all the varieties of crops that I will be sowing at the Kitchen Garden and at my allotments. The Sow week number is based on my calendar which I hope to share with you all next week, the Out week number is when I predict that I will need to transplant the crops that have not been sown directly, this will obviously be dependant on the weather conditions at that time. One of my biggest challenges this year is to try and sow and plant successionally to provide the hotel restaurant with fresh vegetables as long as possible.

My first sowing of the year will be done this week, I am going to sow my first batch of Spencer Sweet Peas to hopefully provide an early show of my favourite flowers. I intend to grow these using the Cordon method which means that I will grow one plant per cane, pinching out any sideshoots and tendrils as they grow, this will give me larger blooms with good long stems making them more suitable for cut flowers. To sow them now, use a 31/2" pot filled with multi purpose compost and sow the seed 1/2" deep and water them in, then place them in a cold frame to germinate and grow on ensuring that you close the coldframe if a frost is forecast. When they have produced 2 pairs of leaves pinch out the growing tip to encourage sideshoots to form, these will be much stronger than the initial shoot and will provide the best shoot to train up your cane and produce the flowers.

Well the big day for me has arrived, on Monday of this week I will be starting my new venture at the Walled Kitchen Garden. I am so excited at the opportunity to get this up and running again in readiness for the opening of the Hotel later on in the Spring. As you can see from my crop list I will be growing a good variety of fresh vegetables as well as fruits and flowers. This photograph is of one side of the Kitchen Garden, which is where I will be starting to ready the ground for the first of the crops. The weather does not look too promising for the start of the week so I will probably be spending time in the greenhouses clearing and tidying them ready for sowing and planting. I will of course let you know in next week's update what progress I have made.

GROW YOUR OWN

This week on Friday night 8.30pm on BBC2 saw the start of a new series on growing your own vegetables, this was a great opportunity for the BBC to finally offer us gardener's a good advice packed programme on how to grow your own, unfortunately I feel that they wasted the opportunity with a programme with very little useful content and instead filled with out of focus camera shots, inappropriate music and Carol who in my view is a very good plantswoman going over the top with her squeals of delight. Having read gardener's responses to the programme on the various gardening forums on the web, I know that the vast majority share this view. What a shame that they did not produce this programme better, people need to know that you don't just dig a hole 6" apart and drop in the seed Potato and go back 3 or 4 months later and dig them up, then when you notice things like scab, slug damage, eel worm damage or a very poor yield, wonder what went wrong? I wish that I had the time and the opportuntiy to do such a programme but giving the viewer much more useful content such as choosing the varieties of Potatoes and why, soil preparation, pests and diseases that may be encountered and remedies for such, harvesting and storing of the crop. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned but I wish we had the likes of Geoff Hamilton or Percy Thrower around giving good sound advice rather than a modern PR attempt to encourage people to grow their own. Never mind we live in hope?

Well I've had my little moan BBC, that is it for now. I will be back as usual next week with my update on how I got on during my first week at the Kitchen Garden, I hope that everyone is looking forward to another season on our vegetable patches with seed Potatoes arriving in the garden centers ready for chitting and some seeds being sown already by some such as Onions and Chillies, take care all and have a good week, regards Steve.