Following on from the great pea and broad bean harvest, I decided to dig up my garlic on the 18th July as the leaves had gone over and had started to dry out. Last season I planted garlic in the Autumn but, a wet Winter saw it covered in rust by the time the bulbs were supposed to be putting on weight. As a result, Autumn planting wasn't successful so this season I went for Spring planting.
The cloves (Germidour) were planted out on the 4th March and were showing strongly by the 21st March (see March 7th & 21st blog posts). While not massive, the garlic has produced a large number of usable bulbs which are currently drying out in the shed. I'm going to keep the largest bulbs for planting next season as garlic varieties can adapt to local conditions. In a few seasons I hope to have my own strain.
I sowed Sweet Candle F1 carrots a week or so into April. Due to my heavy clay soil I used the 'bar' method, i.e, I used a metal bar to create a few lines of conical holes around two foot deep in the ground which I filled with a mixture of sand and compost - the seeds were sown on top. When growing strongly, I thinned to one plant per station. I did a bit of weeding this week and noticed that two stations had an extra carrot growing so I carefully pulled the unwanted carrot up to leave one to grow on. The two 'thinnings' can hardly be considered as such as they looked great; this bodes well for some large Sweet Candle in a few months time. (Pic - two carrots 'thinned' from the Sweet Candle F1 rows).
I also decided to experiment with the smaller Nantes variety grown as 'finger carrots' by inserting a spade into the ground, wiggling it back and forth to create a 'V' shaped tench which was back-filled with rough compost. The seeds were sown on top. Now I can say that the spade method has also worked rather well, producing a lovely crop of nice, smaller carrots. I've just started taking these, pulling the larger ones from the line to leave enough space for the others to grow. (Pic - a nice bunch of smaller carrots sown in a spade made 'V' trench).
Finally, my kohl rabi, White Vienna, are starting to get to a size where I can pick them. They are such unusual vegetables that taste a bit like a nutty cabbage - they can be boiled or grated raw into salads. It's the stem that swells and, while odd looking, they have grown pretty well this season. (Pic - a trio of kohl rabi).
That's it for this post and probably for this month too. As I'm writing the rain outside is finally beginning to ease, it's been lashing down all day. The forecast suggest that it will heavy showers for the next few days so I'll be catching up again with the plot in a week or so. Until early August then, bye for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment