Kitchen Garden Forum

Hello all, I have turned part of my garden into a veg/ fruit patch and have even got some ex battery hens to be more self sufficient, my wife has now challenged me to grow next years christmas dinner, HELP...

carrots, spuds, parsnips and sprouts when should I plant/ sow to be ready for christmas 2008.

Thanks in advance new guy rooster (Ian)

hi rooster
best of luck with the xmas dinner, no need to panic yet easter is plenty early enough to start planting in the garden.
any main crop carrot or spud will either stay in the ground to be lifted ar xmas or they can be lifted earlier and stored. parsnips can be dug on the day .
the sprouts may be more of a problem , look at some catalogues and pick a variety that is mature at the right time and hope for the best, here again if they are early you could pick and freeze them.
the trick is not to let the kitchen give you the menue, let the other half make the dinner with what youve got on the day ... this year we had roast pumpkin and jerusulem artichokes aswell as the more common stuff.

I'd definitely try for fowl rather than pork or beef.

Whatever you grow keep the chucks off the veg with some netting or the like. They'll devastate it before it gets an inch high.

If we'd have eaten from the veg garden this xmas we'd have had roasted Jalapenos with an Oregano sauce, roast oregano with a Jalepeno sauce. Or roast chicken. She started laying just in time to escape the sage and onion.

Loz

Well good luck with the veg, I have to say that unless you are of stronger stomach than me, it'll be a vegetarian Xmas meal. Self sufficiency sounds great, but I couldn't kill a chicken I'd been introduced to.

Hello, Rooster (what an appropriate name!), I don't know anything about the chickens, but you should certainly be able to provide plenty of veggies for the 2008 Christmas dinner: sprouts, roast potatoes and parsnips, carrots, mashed swede, Jerusalem artichoke, celeriac, butternut squash (if you can get them to grow which I never can) and, of course, any vegetables like peas, runner beans, French beans, broad beans which you may have frozen in summer.

As for timing, my main advice would be: don't rush things, later sowings always catch up. Buy your Kitchen Garden magazine every month as well as one or two gardening books Alan Titchmarsh's The Garderner's Year has useful tips but there are many others) and, at this time of the year, plan and prepare your ground and, when spring has sprung, get sowing!

Some good advice so far thank you all.

The chickens are just for the eggs we originally adopted them from the battery hen welfare trust to stop them from going to slaughter. My wife would serve me for dinner rather than the chucks, so it will be free range turkey or goose I think.

As for the veg, well I'd not considered freezing before but of course that will work, thanks.

The ground is getting plenty of preperation for the spring (chicken poo is wonderful stuff I'm told) but I already have some over winter stuff in:

Spring onions
red onions
garlic
broad beans
turnips
spinach

I've also just planted:

3 apple trees
1 plum tree
1 pear tree
3 red currants
3 black currants
1 blackberry
4 raspberries
2 clumps of rhubarb (which is already showing red shoots)

Regards, Ian

oh and lots of strawberries

I've also started buying KG mag Febs issue will be my 3rd.

Some Photographs of my little patch can be seen on a chicken forum frequented by my wife.

http://club.omlet.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17613&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Hi Rooster,

Your plot looks great, I aspire to the neat and tidy, but have to accept that I'd simply have to be another person...
Chicken poo is indeed very good, but you might be advised to compost it for a while,as fresh it can burn roots. It will make your compost go fast. Sorry sure you knew that.
All teh best with it.

Di