MY WEEK : 6 ( 5TH FEBRUARY )

What a week we have all had with the weather, Winter definitely returned with a vengeance with some sharp frosts and heavy snow. The coldest night here was on Wednesday with -8c which was the coldest of the season so far, fortunately though the weather is improving and becoming milder again. The only day I did not manage to get to the Kitchen Garden was on Thursday when all the schools were closed so Daniel had the day off which he really enjoyed, throwing snowballs and making a snowman.






The week started with me making some tunnel cloches to warm the soil before I sowed the Early Carrots (F1 Junior), as it happened with the wintry weather we had later in the week I had to delay the sowing of these until next week. I decided to make my own cloches as I think that the ones that are sold in garden centres, gardening catalogues etc are very expensive. To make these 4 x 20ft cloches I bought a 20m roll of water pipe(£10), 2 x packs of polythene sheeting 20ft x 6ft(£8), then I cut the water pipe into 1m lengths and cut the polythene sheets length ways giving 4 x 20ft x 3ft covers, then I inserted canes into the ends of the pipes and inserted them into the ground and then stretched the covers over them weighting them down at the ends with bricks to hold the covers taught.






With the weather being too adverse for getting onto the soil it was the ideal time to continue sorting through the Glasshouse areas, there are a lot of Fuchsias, Cannas, Pelargoniums, Amaryllis and Spider Plants which will provide us with plenty of cuttings for use later.






The Sweet Peas that were sown are doing well now that they are away from the mice, this week I have seen quite a few cases of people asking why their seedlings are leggy, I placed the pot of Sweet Peas in an environment where there was too much heat and not enough light to show what happens to seedlings, as you can see from the top-left picture they have become very leggy and will not result in good plants, whereas the rest of my Sweet Peas that are in plenty of light and at the correct temperature are growing well and now at this stage they can be moved out into a cold frame to grow on, all I need to do now is close the cold frame up when the temperature is forecast to go below -2c.







My overwintered Chrysanthemums are starting to shoot now, these will be used to take cuttings from to produce this season's plants. Also the Hot Peppers/Chilli's are germinating well with the Aubergine's not far behind them. This week I have also sown the Tomatoes and Cucumbers in the propagator, these will require growing on in a heated environment which we will soon have here at the Kitchen Garden as we intend to get a gas heater for one of the Glasshouse areas.





This week I made an amazing find of Rabbit's tails on canes which would have been used for pollinating the plants in the greenhouses and the fruit trees, this would have helped to ensure a good crop of fruit in the absence of enough pollinating insects. Also this week we took soil samples from the area of the field that we intend to crop on this season, this was to see what the PH level of the soil was and also to see if we had any major pest problems such as Chafer Grubs and Wire worm, fortunately there does not seem to be much in the way of pests and the PH values of the soil ranged from 6.1 to 6.5 which is ideal for the range of crops we intend to grow this season.





We managed to clear all the shrubs and trees from this border despite the weather this week, we still have the roots to remove though which will be quite a job considering the size of some of the plants, next week we intend to empty some of the cold frames to make room for the Sweet Peas and other plants that we want to sow in modules during the Spring, I am considering using the cold frames to grow some of our crops in this season as well.


Well that is it for another week, hopefully we will experience milder conditions during the coming week allowing us all to continue with our preparation for the season ahead, I'm intending to go to my allotments this weekend to get some jobs done there, I will let you know next week what I get done, thanks for visiting regards Steve.