Sunday 28th March - Summer is here !

Well, initially we thought Summer had arrived as the weather today was lovely - we have even got the garden furniture out of the garage but are now quite disappointed as the weather has turned wet, cold and even the chance of snow tomorrow !!! How did that happen - maybe we jinxed it by getting the chairs out !

Oh well, we managed to put the early potatoes in behind the garage (a row of Foremost, then Lady Balfour and then a row of Amorosa). Then Henry planted a row of parsnip seeds too (which he brought back from school). We are aiming to go down to the allotment on Friday (Good Friday) morning and sow a few seeds, plant the tomatoes in the greenhouse and generally see how things are getting on down there.

Friday 25th March 2010

All 4 Bulgarian carrot chillies are through now, 3 cayenne yellow chillies and one of the Carnival Mix peppers. We'll have to pop to the allotment sometime this weekend as we have things that need sowing now the weather is getting better.

We're going to split the potatoes and sow the early ones at home in the garden as Daddy has cleared a space for some veggies at home as well.

Tuesday 23rd March 2010 - Henry's Birthday !

The update as of this morning is that 2 Hungarian Carrot chillies are now coming through, 2 Cayenne Yellow chillies are through, 1 of the pepper plants is just poking through. The tomato plants are growing nicely (about an inch and a half tall now). Still no sign of the Big Boy tomato plants - if nothing comes by the weekend we may sow another couple and see what happens.

Sunday 14th March 2010

Well, we now have all 3 Golden Cherry tomato plants growing, the 2 Shirley tomato plants and the 2 Gardener's Delight plants. So far, no sign of the Big Boy tomatoes (2), Carnival Mix Peppers (3), Hungarian Carrot Chillies (3), and Cayenne Yellow Chillies (3). Still time though, apparently the chillies and peppers are slow to germinate !

Went to see Graham yesterday at the allotment shop to get the Calabrese (Broccoli) seeds he promised me (he gave me them as they were last years seeds !) Cool, so hopefully this year we will have proper big heads on the broccoli rather than the sprouting type. Fingers crossed !

Thursday 11th March 2010

Hooray - two tiny seedlings (Golden Cherry Tomato) were peeping through the soil this morning when Henry did his usual checking :-)

Still no sign of the others but hopefully it'll be any day now !

Sunday 7th March 2010

The weather was beautiful today (exceptionally cold and frosty but bright sunshine) so we went down to the allotment about 9 o'clock in the morning and planted some garlic at the bottom end of the bed with the Jerusalem Artichokes in. We put some new wire around the posts to support the raspberries when they start growing again. We also noticed some small green buds on the gooseberry bushes so things are starting to look up :-)

We then dug up the remaining parsnips in Henry's bed and the one next to his. We had 3 bags full of parsnips and some of them were about a foot and a half long !!! When we got home I made some Spicy Root Soup using some of them (a recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Book 4), and also par-boiled a pile of them and froze them for easy roasting ! We gave a bag to Dave's parents and we have about 5 large ones left in the garage, and I'll probably make more soup once we've used the Root soup up.