MY WEEK : 3 ( 15TH JANUARY )

Hello and welcome to this week's update of my progress. As you all know the weather has been very bad up and down the country, the gales have created so much damage in places. Fortunately the only damage in the Kitchen Garden has been the loss of the Eucalyptus trees and at my Allotments the fruit cage has been flattened, it could have been much worse as I have heard from plot holders who have had their greenhouses and sheds flattened beyond repair. Next week we are due to have our first real taste of Winter with Snow forecast and temperatures struggling to get above freezing, at least that means that the destructive winds should have left us all.


I went to the allotments to survey the damage after the gales on Thursday and as you can see from this photograph the Fruit Cage has collapsed. Unfortunately on closer inspection two of the main uprights have snapped and the netting has been damaged quite badly. As I have now started the Kitchen Garden project and I have limited time available at the allotments I intend to scrap the wooden framework and the current netting, I will use the metal polytunnel framework that I had started to erect and cover it with the scaffold netting that I have used on my Brassica cage/tunnel as this has withstood the gales very well. Other plot holders had suffered varying degrees of damage as well, which is not surprising considering the strength of the winds we experienced.




Whilst inspecting for any wind damage I noticed that the Early Purple Sprouting has started to produce it's spears, so I am looking forward to harvesting the first of these soon and unbelievably the Calabrese is still producing florets which is amazing after it produce the main center heads in September.





This week at the Kitchen Garden, I started the first seed sowing of the project, I sowed 150 of the Spencer Sweet Peas that I had saved from last years plants. These were sowed 5 to a 5" pot in seed and sowing compost and then these were placed in the propagator which has been set at 55f to germinate, they will then be transferred to the unheated greenhouse or cold frame to grow on until ready for planting in late March. I also sowed 100* 3" pots of Sweet Peas to sell later in the Spring to passing trade which is what we intend to do if we have any excess plants or produce. I also potted up about 100 Garlic cloves which had started to shoot, these have been placed in the cold greenhouse to grow on for a few weeks until their growing area has been fertilised with Chicken Manure pellets and this will enable them to start to produce their roots which will encourage them to grow away quickly, hopefully to still produce a good crop by the end of the Summer.





When the weather was a bit wet and wild, it was the ideal opportunity to get into the pot store and make a start on cleaning and sorting out the hundreds of pots ready for using. After washing them out in soapy water they were then rinsed in a disinfectant solution to rid them of any harmful bacteria to help ensure a healthy start for the seeds and plants. As you can see from the photographs there are hundreds of pottery or clay pots from days gone by which adds to the whole nostalgia of the place, in fact standing at and using the potting benches looking out over the fields as I'm sure many gardeners have done in the past was again quite humbling.




Sweet Peas in the Propagator.......... Garlic in the Cedar wood greenhouse.

Another indoor job that I carried out this week was to sort out the Orange tree in the Glasshouse. The top 1" of the compost needed to be removed carefully as they have very shallow roots and this was then replaced with fresh compost to help feed and enrich the tree. The only pruning that it required was to remove the top growth to maintain it's shape, the top growth that they produce when they are this age and size will only reduce the fruit size on the rest of the tree so they are best removed. Elsewhere there is a Quince on the front of the main house which has started to bloom, hopefully the wintry weather that we have forecast for the coming week will not do it any harm.




The main bed that we were working on last week has been finished, the bottom 1/3rd was extremely difficult to do as there were around 60 perennials in there that needed to be dug up and removed which was not too bad, however the couch grass roots were rife as they were obviously difficult for the past gardeners to remove as they love to grow through the roots of other plants. The perennials will be kept to provide plants for other parts of the gardens, we will transplant them into another border which is not intended for use as a vegetable bed.



The bed that we have cleared on the right in this photograph is where we intend to transplant the perennials that I have mentioned and the bed on the left has had what few plants of worth removed and weeded as this also had a great deal of couch grass roots in it. Weather permitting my intention this week is to remove the turf from this large bed and to stack it in a corner to leave it for 12 months or so to breakdown into lovely loam for use elsewhere around the gardens.


This week the main seed order arrived which as many of you know is an exciting time as you know the thought of the crops growing and maturing is something we all look forward to. For this season I will be relying on pelleted Chicken Manure to give the majority of the soil a boost as the bulk manure that I have ordered will need to rot for the rest of the year before it can be incorporated into the soil.

Well that is it for another week, despite the weather conditions we have experienced I think that a great deal has once again been achieved and things are starting to slowly take shape. Thank you once again for all your wonderful emails, posts etc expressing your appreciation of my efforts on this website it means so much to me and gives me a boost as I can feel your support for me to succeed with this project which I am really enjoying. Have a good week and I will speak to you again next week as usual, thanks Steve.