Kitchen Garden Forum

I grow mange tout in the pollytunnel I don’t bother with pease I’ve had to many failures but mange tout do well early on

I have started growing sugar snap peas the last couple of years, and have really got to like them….

It is now a sweaty zero degrees in the sunshine, so I lifted the last of the carrots, weeded and added a bag of farmyard manure and put some fleece on in a vein attempt at warming the soil a bit, got some shallots to go in there in the next few weeks.

Tomato seeding sowing time for me, I really must grow less plants this year we were swamped with them last year lol.
Minibel and Garden Pearl are the small ones
Principe Borghese, Black Russian, Tigerella and Breakfast are the middling sized
Orange Queen and Cour di Bue are the beef steak ones. Two seeds of each to be sown in cells and I really must not grow all 18 of them lol.
These will be in the heated prop in the conservatory to start as it was minus 2.7 in the greenhouse last night.
I forgot the Gardeners Delight, one of my favourites

a good reminder to get my tomato seeds out Tigerburnie, thankyou very much! I always grow too many as well.

More greenhouse work this morning, tidying up the window box with last years Strawberries in, remove dead leaves, evict Woodlouse and Snail and add some 6x chicken manure and finally a good watering now the frosts have gone for a few days, plenty of new growth coming, so hopefully some fruit by about May time.

It’s nice to get jobs like that completed, Tigerburnie….i’ve been moving lots of pots of over-wintered perennials about…..getting a bit of room in the glasshouse now….

Most of the heavy stuff that needs doing is done before my op in case I don't feel up to it for a bit, but nature like the tide waits for no-one lol.

If you have any really heavy things that need doing, I can always ask Cook….

Planted all my 90 potatoes today. Bed covered with polythene since January, planted by trowel then polythene put back. Bit of a problem though, I dropped two of the egg trays they had been chitting on in the spare bedroom as I came down the stairs and spilt three varieties. Not difficult to sort them back into three lots but which was which? They were Setanta, Nadine and Harmony. Pretty sure the Setanta were the dark rough ones, this is how I have labelled the other two, anybody got any ideas?
The potatoes in the polytunnel look OK but have got a bit of growing to do for the projected first harvest date of 30th April, 4 Swift nearer the camera and 8 Charlotte. Mangetout peas looking good in there.

I do this with tatties every year I grow more than variety, one year I labelled them all with plastic labels and a pencil, the rain washed of the writing and I never did remember which was what, but we ate them all.

I agree with your decision, Geoff….Nadine are a slightly more oval variety…It’s a job to tell from the picture but, Harmony have a slightly more sunken area where their eyes are.
Was there much wailing and nashing of teeth, when you dropped them?

I always have something mixed up thanks to the cats who are always attracted to the plant labels. I have spent ages trying to id the perennials as the dog knocked the staging on a lean chasing a bee & all the ones on the second shelf slid off & some out of their pots & so many of the leaves look so similar. Thankfully I'm not into colour zoned flower beds!

Thanks OH. I didn't check the photograph until after I had planted them or I would have had another go. Particularly annoying as they are two varieties I am trialling. The wife wasn't impressed by the language, think she thought I had broken part of me!

The first of the seasons videos, just click on the link and there is sound if you like, hope you find it useful