New Beginnings

Spring is around the corner and so Matt's Patch is being reborn. Yes - I'm back!

I have been given a new allotment in the village which means I should be able to spend more time there, or rather, it should be easier to pop in and do bits and bobs.
I hand over the cash and get to see where my plot is on March 5th.

In the mean time I have taken advantage of the slight warming of the weather to plant some seeds.

A week ago (Feb 19th) I planted the following:

• Tomatoes - Sweet Million F1
• Tomatoes - Alicante
• Peppers - multi-coloured rainbow mix
• Broad beans left over from a two years ago - will they work? I'll let you know!

Although I'll be getting a variety of potatoes from Coventry Market, I picked up a few of these blue ones while I have having a scout around the market stall. I think they're the same as these.

4-Bed Rotation System

In anticipation of preparing my allotment I've been looking into how the 4-Bed rotation system works. The idea is to have four beds and rotate the veg grown in them every year. The aim is to avoid a build-up of pests and diseases specific to certain vegetables.
Now the key is in the word rotation, rather than just swapping vegetable beds around, as this video from Gardener's World explains.

In a nutshell the order of rotation is:

1. Potatoes. Plant in well dug soil with lots of manure.
2. Legumes (peas, beans, etc). These will deposit nitrogen into the soil by storing it in their roots so make sure you leave the roots there at the end of the season.
3. Brassicas (broccoli, calabrese, cabbage, cauliflower, etc). These love the nitrogen that's been left by the legumes.
4. Root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, etc). These don't need huge amounts nutrients. Any excess will just go into the foliage and not increase the size of the root.

Onions and other alliums like leeks and garlic can go in with the legumes as they like the same kinds of conditions.

Each season you move the vegetables round in order, with the potatoes following the root vegetables after the ground has had a good dig and more manure.

Well that's the theory and it makes sense on paper. I wonder how it'll work in practice!

Some more information on 4-bed rotation is here.

Potatoes!

On Saturday and with great anticipation Emily and I picked the two Red Duke of Yorks that had been growing well in an old recycling container on our patio. We turned it out and started rummaging through the compost expecting a bumper crop of spuds.
This is what we managed to get from two plants that had been growing since early April:

Red Duke of Yorks from two plants

In order to supplement the potatoes for the evening meal Em and I then picked the broad beans that were ready. It's probably a reasonable amount from four dwarf Sutton plants.

We picked all the broad beans that were ready

Once picked Em and her granddad set about shelling them. We offered the bean cases to Patch the guinea pig but, understandably, she turned her nose up at them!

Emily and her granddad shelling beans

One benefit of growing potatoes in containers is that they come out of compost a lot cleaner than out of the soil. Speaking of soil, I did plant one Red Duke of York down in the potato patch at the end of the garden. Emily and I dug up that plant but found nothing apart from one tiny little tuber. Anyway, after a nice cleanup the potatoes were ready for their weigh-in. They came in at 862g which is 1lb 14oz in old money. With the potato I snaffled a couple of weeks earlier, I reckon that's 2lb of spuds, 1lb per plant. I don't know how good that is. It doesn't sound a lot and I was expecting more. Maybe I should have watered more.

Beans and Pots all cleaned up and ready for the weigh in

So we enjoyed the potatoes and broad beans with some gammon and parsley sauce, eaten al fresco. Beautiful.

First Courgette

Meet our first courgette! Picked this very morning. Ok, so it's a little wonky and wouldn't make it past an EU market inspector but hey - it's the first proper produce from Matt's Patch (lettuce doesn't really count). So, in anticipation of a glut of courgettes I've been looking up recipes. Obviously there's fritters, but I'm more interested in Courgette Cake (a bit like carrot cake but, you've guessed it, with courgette instread). Another recipe I've found was on a Waitrose card for Minted Courgette Soup.

First courgette - hopefully one of many

I also thought I'd show the progress of the broad beans - they're coming along nicely. I've found a recipe for these too that I want to try - from the Guardian's gardening blog. I haven't planted our French beans out yet, so broad beans are all we've got to look at at the moment.

Beans are getting fatter - won't be long now ...

What I have done is to give the 4 cucumber plants a bigger home. This is two of them in a trough. As for the other two (not pictured), one is a bit of a runt so may not make it through the stress of moving house! Let's hope they do better than the last lot, otherwise I'll just give up with cucumbers.

Cucumbers have been moved to bigger homes

Our tomatoes seem to be quite a way behind other people's. Never the less, they have started producing flowers which I am duly tapping when I pass by to help with pollination. I'm also pinching out the side shoots that grow between the main stem and the side leaves. This leaves a nice smell of tomatoes on your hands!

A little late but we have tomato flowers

Emily and Megan can't wait for more sunshine to help ripen the strawberries. They're so very close to being ready it's painful. Even with the mesh over them, something has still managed to get in and half-eat a couple. Why do they do that? If you don't like strawberries LEAVE THEM ALONE! GRRRR!

mmmmm! Strawberries. Gorgeous!

The Little Things

Time for an update on the little things. First off I had to look very carefully but eventually managed to spy some tiny broad beans! There are loads of flowers on the plants but they kept dropping off. I think this was down to the awfully wet, windy weather we've been experiencing. I'm assuming it stopped the bees coming out and hanging around our beans, thus the flowers were simply wasted.

A Tiny weeny broad bean

Staying with the rainy weather I thought it would be the undoing of our first courgette. However, it seems to be ok, even though there was no male flower open at the time. It's growing well and got a little sister too.

Courgette growing well with little sister

There are two apple trees in our garden being trained along wires as
'espaliers'. One tree still has its label on which says it's an Egremont Russet. I suspect the other is too.
Earlier in the spring I gave both trees a good pruning (too good I think as I my have removed some of the fruit spurs!). Anyway, a few flowers duly came and cheered me up and now, in between the leaves, are baby apples! Hooray!

There are a few little apples on our two trees

Carrying on the fruit theme, the strawberry patch now had had mesh put over it. Hopefully this will prevent attacks from squirrels and pigeons. Grrr.

The strawberries have some protection at last

Beans: Broad but short!

Last year, in our old garden, we grew runner beans. They did very well, producing loads of beans but growing very tall, as they do. It's common knowledge that beanstalks grow very tall. In fact I recall one book I've read where the beanstalk reaches into the clouds. Even our little girls are aware of this documented occurrence!

Anyway, with this in mind, when choosing our broad beans I picked a dwarf variety (Sutton).
As you may have read previously, these have been planted out now. However they have not got very tall at all. So I did a bit of research and normal broad beans only grow to about 3ft any way! And I've got dwarf ones! 1.5ft - that's how high mine will get!

Well, they should still do well - they're in flower at the moment so hopefully will not be long before we get some proper produce from Matt's Patch (lettuce excluded).

One thing that has gone completely mad are the potatoes. I've earthed over the ones in the corner of the garden and as for the ones in the containers - they seem to be growing by a couple of inches a day, particularly the Red Duke of York. As soon as they get covered over, they've broken through again be the next morning! I hope they are growing equally well under the soil.

Beans are out

Over the last week our Broad Beans have been planted out by the raspberries with the fence as support. These were a special request from Mrs Matt as she likes them with gammon and parsley sauce. The rest of us prefer the squeaky French beans which have just been planted. Six broad beans germinated but Emily and I planted the strongest five. This gave us the opportunity to have a good look at the rejected plant and how a broad bean grows. As always it's very impressive to see how Mother Nature works (click on the picture for a detailed close-up).Emily's sweetcorn have also gone out in a little block. As they are wind pollinated it is best to plant them in a block rather than a line.
A few slug pellets sprinkled around them and the broad beans should give them a fighting chance while they get established in their new homes.

The raspberries are doing well with new canes growing strongly. They seem to get visibly bigger every day. and new shoots seem to come up all over the place. They may need controlling later but we'll let them do what they want for the time being.

The strawberries have reacted very well to their new home with all but one of them producing flowers. With a bit of luck (and fertiliser) they, along with the raspberries, might - just might - provide enough fruit for the two little girls who seem to devour them for fun these days.

April Fools

Well it seems like ages since I posted anything but time has not stood still in Matt's Patch - far from it. We're into April and have had a good few days of sunny weather. A lot of the garden has sprung into life and it's very interesting seeing what happens. Plants that we never knew were there suddenly burst into flower. Even one of our strawberry plants has gone mad and produced a flower! They're still in their pots as we have not had time to plant them out yet.

The sole courgette plant has been re-potted into something bigger. Out of a packet of 6 seeds, I initially planted 4. Only one germinated. Boo. So the other day I decided to soak the two remaining seeds overnight and planted them the following morning, just to see if that would help speed up the process at all.

I have also planted some French Dwarf Beans, some straight out of the packet and some soaked overnight. There were a couple of days between the normal ones and the soaked ones being planed so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

After what seemed like ages of nothing happening with the pepper seeds, they seem to have decided that conditions are now right and have come up quite well. Which is more than I can say about the cucumbers. There were only 5 in the packet so they all got planted. One came up (eventually) so I poked around in the other pots. A couple seemed to have germinated but either were too deep and could not get above ground level. In order to help them I removed some of the earth from around the yellowish leaves (yellow due to lack of light) and they seem to be moving on a bit now. I'll be lucky if I get three plants from that lot.

Better news on the Broad Bean front. There are some decent plants coming along now. I'm still staggered by how complicated the leaf structure is compared to everything else which just seems to have a pair of leaves initially. The broad beans are more like a complete plant folded up very carefully which slowly opens out.

The lettuces are also doing well. The first crop have been moved out into troughs along with a few of the spinach plants that came up. As a little present for them I've just bought some nitrogen-rich fertiliser to help their leaves! As for the other salad crops the land cress is going great guns and I have planted a 2nd crop of them. Well, when I say 'another crop' I really mean another pot. I put some rocket seeds down last weekend and within two days they had germinated. They're doing very well. With such speedy growth it's no wonder it's called rocket!

Last but not least all the seed potatoes have chitted very well and will have to go in the ground this weekend. I think some can go in the now-redundant recycling bins but the main crop ones will have to go in the garden beds somewhere. I've got some bonemeal for a slow release feed and also some phosphorus which had pictures of root vegetables on the box!

Movement at last

I'm pleased (and relieved) to say that over the past few days there has been a bit of progress in the seedling department of Matt's Patch.
One of the three courgettes has decided to come out and play. This is the first time I've grown courgettes so I'm very surprised by the size of the little fellow. Two great big leaves that seemed to appear from nowhere. I know the seeds are bigger than other things like pepper and tomato but the size of these leaves is ridiculous! They were instantly big!

A couple of the broad beans have also popped their heads up along with a solitary tomato plant. No news as yet from the peppers or the cucumbers. I'm readying the search party.

The salad leaves are doing well (mixed lettuce, land cress and spinach). I've sown a second crop of lettuce seeds so that there will be a constant supply for the slugs. Wouldn't want them going hungry!

A friend of ours has kindly given us some strawberry plants from their garden so now we have nine plants in total. The new ones are not as far on as the shop-bought ones but they're all doing well and I can almost see a strawberry jam production line being set up ...

Emily's sweetcorn (Incredible F1) have also been planted. To help get them started I soaked them in tepid water for about 20 mins prior to planting. The last time we grew sweetcorn they were simply rubbed with butter, covered in foil and put on the barbecue within a few minutes of being picked and tasted beautiful!

Since moving my potatoes to the sun room in the house they are doing much better with the additional light. I still have to get their containers sorted.

The Greenhouse Effect

The people we bought our house from were kind enough to leave their greenhouse complete with aluminium racks and even an old wireless thermometer which looked like it hadn't worked in ages. After fitting new batteries to the thermometer it burst into life. There should be another part to it so that the greenhouse temperature can be monitored from the comfort of the house. We've never found this part - maybe it died some time ago. Anyway the main bit is working and the other day it reported that it was 25°C. Toasty!

Over the winter the only thing in the greenhouse was a couple of bales of hay for the guinea pig. Obviously that had to change so just over a week ago (Sunday 22nd Feb) Megan and I set about planting our vegetable seeds. So far we have planted some of the following:

• Courgettes (Astia F1)
  
• Broad beans - Dwarf type (The Sutton)
  
• Tomatoes (Shirley F1)
  
• Salads made up of lettuce, land cress (which is like water cress only ... on land) and spinach
  
• Bell Peppers of various types although they were all in one packet. Hmmm.

The first to show their faces were some of the lettuce plants. Well done, we have a winner!

With the salad plants I'm going to (hopefully) plant some every 3-4 weeks so that there is a nice steady supply. Once large enough they will go outside in a planter. Probably to be eaten by slugs. I think the pecking order will be slugs, us, then Patch the guinea pig.

This last weekend I planted some cucumber (Telegraph) seeds - all five of them! According to the packet, if trained properly they could reach 50cm! Which just begs the question how exactly do you train a cucumber?

I still have French Beans to plant but according to the packet it's still too early - even in a greenhouse. What do they know - I may just put some in pots just to see ...