0 comment Friday, September 12, 2014 | admin
I brought the tomatoes and squash in yesterday as the weather has taken a nosedive - a really cold nosedive which looks as if it will continue on through the rest of the week. I've had to turn the heating back on, if you can dig that one. Way too cold for peppers, toms or squash to be outside, so inside they are instead, soaking up sun on the windowsill and getting a fair treat of compost tea and egg shells to keep their strength up, as the squash is actually trying to set flowers now, bless it.
I think I'm kind of glad I didn't get things into the ground yet as I imagine I may have lost the lot. This week I will be trotting on over to Homebase for a growhouse to move the toms and peppers into - doesn't need to be huge, just needs to be able to house the lot and keep them warm. I would happily consider just saying buggrit and growing them indoors if I didn't have the rather sprawling, vine-ish varieties of toms. I'm also not a very good pollinator - I look rubbish in yellow and black, doesn't suit my skintone.
So adding that to the soil needs and some more netting - I've netted over my current veg bed to try and give my peas and chard a fighting chance, and since the second sowing of lettuce is currently fighting its way free of the soil, I want to actually taste it myself this time round! However this leaves the strawberries exposed - they're starting to set some flowers and I need to be sure they get their chance to grow and ripen without the starlings eating the lot.
Maybe I've an idiot, but food waste is something I've been struggling with, especially when it came to chicken bones. Usually, I bone everything and then throw the bones to the dog. But as I've been buying whole chickens and using some of the bone for stock, I've been throwing cooked bones in the bin. When I make buffalo wings, that's a LOT of bones. It suddenly occurred to me after such a wing-debauch that I should have been using those for stock. So, hurrah (and 'duh') that's exactly what I did - a great, robust stock it made as well. But it still left me with loads of cooked bones; no good for the dog, and not a scrap of skin or meat on them. Thought occurred: why the hell do I buy bone meal? I used to bury dead pets under a huge rosebush when I was a kid and it was the most nourished plant we had. After giving the chicken bones a really good boil and clean, I buried them a foot deep in the pot with the cherry tree - said cherry tree seems rather happy, and I think this is a practice I shall continue with, albeit sparingly, alongside the comfrey, fruit trees and roses.
The leeks are leeking away, as leeks do. I may actually manage leeks this year, wouldn't that be a shock? The red onions have reached "spring onion" stage and now and again I carefully trim off the tops for cooking - today they featured in the Veiny-cheese/Smoked bacon/Polenta Muffins Mark II and were divine. Shallots are also doing their thing and soon I'll be putting the dwarf runner bean seeds in the ground. The Rothild carrots are starting to germinate - globe carrots are growing just fine even with the transplanting, but I think a topdress of bone meal has helped in that regard. So far, the potatoes are happy in their compost/paper bedding and will need some more hilling up very soon. The dahlias are struggling - I think it's just too cold for them - but the asters are turning very green now, setting forth new leaves and I can't wait to see how they do this fall. Sunflowers doing fine - it's pretty hard to kill sunflowers once they've started, and once they've settled in their permanent placement, I think they'll do smashing.
Things go apace, and this week I think we'll begin discussions on the final placement of beds and last bit of leveling. In the meantime, I see some weeds I need to start hacking at this week, even if the weather isn't clement to doing owt else.
I think I'm kind of glad I didn't get things into the ground yet as I imagine I may have lost the lot. This week I will be trotting on over to Homebase for a growhouse to move the toms and peppers into - doesn't need to be huge, just needs to be able to house the lot and keep them warm. I would happily consider just saying buggrit and growing them indoors if I didn't have the rather sprawling, vine-ish varieties of toms. I'm also not a very good pollinator - I look rubbish in yellow and black, doesn't suit my skintone.
So adding that to the soil needs and some more netting - I've netted over my current veg bed to try and give my peas and chard a fighting chance, and since the second sowing of lettuce is currently fighting its way free of the soil, I want to actually taste it myself this time round! However this leaves the strawberries exposed - they're starting to set some flowers and I need to be sure they get their chance to grow and ripen without the starlings eating the lot.
Maybe I've an idiot, but food waste is something I've been struggling with, especially when it came to chicken bones. Usually, I bone everything and then throw the bones to the dog. But as I've been buying whole chickens and using some of the bone for stock, I've been throwing cooked bones in the bin. When I make buffalo wings, that's a LOT of bones. It suddenly occurred to me after such a wing-debauch that I should have been using those for stock. So, hurrah (and 'duh') that's exactly what I did - a great, robust stock it made as well. But it still left me with loads of cooked bones; no good for the dog, and not a scrap of skin or meat on them. Thought occurred: why the hell do I buy bone meal? I used to bury dead pets under a huge rosebush when I was a kid and it was the most nourished plant we had. After giving the chicken bones a really good boil and clean, I buried them a foot deep in the pot with the cherry tree - said cherry tree seems rather happy, and I think this is a practice I shall continue with, albeit sparingly, alongside the comfrey, fruit trees and roses.
The leeks are leeking away, as leeks do. I may actually manage leeks this year, wouldn't that be a shock? The red onions have reached "spring onion" stage and now and again I carefully trim off the tops for cooking - today they featured in the Veiny-cheese/Smoked bacon/Polenta Muffins Mark II and were divine. Shallots are also doing their thing and soon I'll be putting the dwarf runner bean seeds in the ground. The Rothild carrots are starting to germinate - globe carrots are growing just fine even with the transplanting, but I think a topdress of bone meal has helped in that regard. So far, the potatoes are happy in their compost/paper bedding and will need some more hilling up very soon. The dahlias are struggling - I think it's just too cold for them - but the asters are turning very green now, setting forth new leaves and I can't wait to see how they do this fall. Sunflowers doing fine - it's pretty hard to kill sunflowers once they've started, and once they've settled in their permanent placement, I think they'll do smashing.
Things go apace, and this week I think we'll begin discussions on the final placement of beds and last bit of leveling. In the meantime, I see some weeds I need to start hacking at this week, even if the weather isn't clement to doing owt else.
Labels: Garden