A New Kitchen Garden from a paddock?

[Hannabusses]

figs ? grow that fast wow thats great i thought that might be a tough one to grow. Good info big pot for that then!

[Hannabusses]

hey quick question ladys and gentlemen..

Im at work and i long to get into teh garden this weekend.. Im surrounded by computers all day, i have this weird impression that alot of you are professional gardeners and have been growing for years... so do any of you have computers in the garden shed? use laptops with wireless connection or are u like me stuck at work?

ahhh my mother is buying me PLOTCROP for christmas thats ideal

[retropants]

stuck at work I'm afraid. Only get to the plot once a week, more's the pity.
Am working on winning the lottery or becoming (in)famous soon........*rubs hands together gleefully*

[Alison]

Fruit for South walls
We have three peaches, two figs and an apricot on our S-facing wall. Brian covers the peaches with polythene sheeting late winter / early spring which stops them getting peach leaf curl - essential to do this, as otherwise the plants are damaged and don't produce as heavily. Our biggest peach is around 4 years old and we had 70 peaches on it this year. Absolutely DE-licious. We gorged ourselves and still had lots left over to bottle. The second peach (2 years old) is one of those "doughnut" ones - excellent crop for its age; white flesh; very juicy; but I actually prefer the ordinary one! The third 2-yr-old has not produced anything yet.
The apricot is 2 years old and is huge but had just one small apricot this year! We solemnly shared it and I have to say, the flavour was amazing. Hopefully it will realise its full role in life next summer.
The figs are also 2 years old: Violetta and Brown Turkey. The latter had a really good crop (only one crop, though - I am deeply envious of 3 crops!) and I found I preferred its flavour to Violetta.
Alison.

[peter]

Stuck at work, behind LOTS of no mis-use firwall and monitoring software during the day.

Dark and wet when I get home during the week.

Walnut is worth growing, but if you plant a tree it will be quite a few years before you see a useful crop. My mother's house has one self sown from the neighbours tree that was a six foot whip in 1969 and is now a substantial tree with a decent crop each year.

[Hannabusses]

My mother's house has one self sown from the neighbours tree that was a six foot whip in 1969 and is now a substantial tree with a decent crop each year.

1969!! god man thats older than me ill be too old to eat them if it will take that long ! ok ill call that ''one for the kids''

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Ian, you will probably still be alive, but you will have to suck the walnuts to death, as you probably won't have any teeth.
One thing, they would last longer.

[Hannabusses]

Ahhhh yes the gardeners ultimate wish to live just another 500 years to see how his trees turn out!!
Grrr why didnt the owner 50 years ago plant some walnuts!!

[Allan]

Dear Hannabuses
I keep thinking of your seed list.There has been enough said about initial elimination of perennial weeds but what has not been discussed is what happens when you sow direct, in your case there are many such cultivars. It is inevitable that on your ground you will get a forest of annual weeds and with direct soiwing it becomes a major headache weeding these out before they overwhelm the seedlings of your chosen crop. Even with careful sowing there is only so much that can be done with a hoe, the rest is tedious and time-consuming hand weeding. My advice is to raise as much as you can in containers and plant these out having first cleared the annual weeds.It could be different if you can get raised beds set up in time with enough weed-free compost and organic matter, average FYM or horse manure cannot be guaranteed weed free.
Allan

[Mole]

Re the Walnuts:


"Walnuts usually require cross pollination – plant at least one variety each of groups A and B unless partly self-fertile. All the varieties below are mid-late leafing, minimising possible late frost damage problems; and are resistant to leaf & fruit diseases. They start cropping within 2-5 years."

from Agroforestry Reseach Trusts catalogue.

https://secure.agroforestry.co.uk/plants2003.html

I've been to the research site and seen the trees growing - these are named grafted varieties.

Just bought 8 chestnuts for early cropping - his are 14 years old and cropping very well now.

Mole

[Hannabusses]

Well i have spent a few weeks at it now and yes i can confirm that quickly turning my paddock into a set of raised veg beds has been MORE work than i thought. But with a friend and some stubborn wont fail mentality i have done this so far.

Took up the turf on 6 (was going to be 8 but the turf cutter couldnt take the pressure and broke) 9m*3.5m beds. Rotavated these 6 beds. Then added 200*70ltr bags of compost and 50*70ltr bags of manure. Sadly i had to get bags as i have no access to the paddock from the road so i couldnt get a truck to just tip it over the fence into place. This was costly and an added drama of carrying them in the wheel barrow 3 at a time down the 200 yard garden. Also although i havent built the beds up yet i have moved the wood all the way to the paddock site. That was 36 4ish meter planks of 9inch*1.5inch (pressure treated with some soil friendly product) all on the shoulder thats lots of work even with a friend helping!
At the weekend i think i will cover these beds once i have built the wooden surrounds with the black plastic to stop weeds until im ready to start planting.

I also planted 27 fruit trees over the last few weeks. Apple, pear, cherry, plum (various), mulberry, fig, hazel, apricot. Also planted 4 rhubarb plants and popped huge forcing chimneys on them (will be interesting to see if that works)

With my huge amount of seeds i think i fell into the ''im a new veg grower and am a bit too keen'' trap.. Im still awaiting planning permission for the greenhouse so i thought id use propagators in the house (much to the anoyance of my wife) so i got 4 sankey heated propagators and started sowing, chillis 4 varieties, onions, 4 types of tomato, sweet peppers, melons (3 seeds in the packet a bit cheeky that!!), cucumber, aubergine.. So after all that i sat back proudly looking at the fine propagaters trays of soil/compost interlaced with vermiculite. On the packets it indicated germination should take roughly 3 weeks so i imagined the next time i would have to spend any potting time with them would be in feb.. OH HOW WRONG I WAS. imagine my suprise when the kids ran in the next morning and said ''Daddy all your flowers have grown'' (4 and 7 years old dont differentiate between veg and flowers so you know). To keep them happy i went to look. So how is it possible that in 24 hours all the tomato, chilli, onion had appeared i had a blanket of green looking back at me and after a week the tomato plants look tooo big if thats possible?? 6 inches in a week?? what have i done wrong? not enough sun ? too much heat? hmm have i grown weak plants that i may aswell throw and start again with?? the onions and chillis look a bit more on track.. also the thinning out and potting up to bigger pots looks like a time consuming long job! mental note for the future .... dont plant the whole pack of seeds just because u dont want half used packets hanging around the place!

ok sorry thats a huge ramble i have pictures ill sort that out in a bit .. Have a super new years everyone

[oldherbaceous]

Hello Hannabusses, i wondered where you had gone, but i can see you have been very busy.
You have told me so much, i must go and have a lay down.

I think you might have fallen into that old gardening trap, it's called over eagerness, i think all gardeners have had it at one time or another, first time gardeners just seem to do it in a bit of a bigger way.

I'll have to get back to you on a few pointers, but i think you might already know what most of these will be, as you seem to be recognizing that a few things are not as they should be.

[Alison]

I think my lumbago has come back after reading your posting...
Wow, what a massive amount of work you have done. It all sounds absolutely amazing - congratulations.
I have to fight with myself not to sow too early, as it is such a satisfying thing to do and then you have all these delightful little pots and trays full of promise. But then it is still cold and is still raining outside and you can't plant anything, and they all get leggy and fall over.
The last couple of years I had to sow later than usual for non-gardening reasons, and I was amazed at how quickly late sowings caught up, with the exception of beans for drying, which really did need the whole season in order to mature and dry off properly on the plant. Tomatoes also had a shorter season before blight hit them. But everything else - parsnips, leeks, kales, broccoli, etc - were a perfectly reasonable size by the autumn.
Removed Turf: I had to remove a lot of turf a couple of years ago, and I piled up the clods in a heap and covered it with black plastic, and after a year or so it was the most amazing loam which is great for potting up etc.
Happy 2007! Alison.

[Hannabusses]

Removed Turf: I had to remove a lot of turf a couple of years ago, and I piled up the clods in a heap and covered it with black plastic, and after a year or so it was the most amazing loam which is great for potting up etc.
Happy 2007! Alison.

i have several tons as u will see when i get around to posting piccys of turf i will be covering it up this weekend im thinking next year once its become nice loam i will re introduce it to the raised beds which arent so raised just yet! good point thanks Alison.

Another thing i noticed is id have breakfast and go down the garden to do job A, then at 1pm my wife would come down and find me doing job Z asking ifi wanted some lunch at which point she would notice i hadnt done job A yet.. time warps in the garden and its hard to stick to the task in hand as there are sooooo many things to do!!

[oldherbaceous]

Hannabusses, i think i better try and break this news gently to you, i think you will end up resowing most of what you have sown, again later in the year.
The main problem being that if you have the propagators in the house, they will just not get enough light to grow strong plants, and will end up all leggy.
It is also very early to be sowing most things anyway, as you need to have a greenhouse with some heating to be growing your plants in once they come out of your propagator.
Even experienced gardeners struggle to grow good plants very early in the year, because of the cold and low light levels.
Please don't think bad of me, but i'm just
trying to explain why things are going a little wrong.
Another tip that is very useful, is to work out roughly how many plants you will need and try and stick to it, if not you end up with trays of overcrowded seedlings that are no good for nothing.

The really good thing though is that you will learn by your mistakes, and there is also plenty of time to sow again.

Hope you don't get too dissheartened.

On a very much brighter note your fruit tree planting sounds as if it was a great success, they will look a real picture when in bloom in the spring, and then who know's maybe some fruit latter in the year.

Hope your raised beds turn out well, i'll leave some one else to give you tips on running these, as i don't use raised beds myself.

Well thats it for now but don't be put of asking questions, please.

P.S i wonder if your wife knew you were going to have the odd failure with your seeds, and this is why she bought so many.