The peas are dead, long live the peas

Pea seedling with long root

I noticed today that many of the pea seedlings in paper pots had long roots sticking out, no doubt groping around looking for soil to grow in. I decided to plant them out straight away, as the roots would probably dry out, entwine, or get damaged some other way if I left them for a couple of weeks as originally planned.

Since there was still no sign of life from the Meteor peas in bed one, I hoed over that area, and planted the pots directly into the soil. For the ones with roots coming out of the bottom, I dug a hole with a trowel in the normal way, then made a hole for the root at the bottom of it with a pencil.

The paper pots took up one of the two rows of climbing-mesh in bed one, and I planted more Greenshaft and Early Onwards seeds directly into the soil. I'm not sure peas need or benefit from going into pots first. The autumn sowing of Meteor came up OK, and weren't eaten by mice, they just didn't survive the winter.

More seedlings appear

Beetroot seedlings - 'Chioggia Pink'

Three beetroot seedlings, and one spinachseedling have appeared now. Ten leeks are visible (which is great - I love leeks!). Peas, cauliflowers, turnips, and cabbage are growing well. Still no sign of the basil or broad beans. I'll give the (probably dead) peas in bed one another couple of weeks to show signs of life, and if there are none I will plant the potted peas there. If the existing peas recover, I'll put the potted ones along the back of bed eight. By the end of March, the weather should be good enough for all the pots to go into the soil, although I haven't worked out where they're all going to fit in yet. Then I will start more growing in pots.

The pots do dry out fairly quickly, but I'm watering them when they seem to need it with a mist-spray bottle.

New bed dug

Bed 11

After making a dog's dinner of a job interview this morning, I took advantage of the sunny weather and indulged in some therapeutic digging. Bed eleven is done, and will probably be used for lettuce and other salad leaves, since it is on the shady side of the garden, like beds nine and ten.

First sign of leeks, other seedlings, broad bean regrowth

Leek seedling

Cauliflower and pea seedlings

Broad bean regrowth

In the paper pots, two leek seedlings have appeared, half of the peas (of both varieties) are visible now, and most of the cauliflowers, turnips, and Greyhound cabbage have put forth their first pair of leaves. No sign yet of the spinach, basil, or beetroot.

Three of the broad beans in bed one are showing new leaf growth, but the rest of them, and all the Meteor peas, are not visible.

Beds two and four ready for spuds

Ready for spuds

I was feeling the after effects of digging yesterday, and I was going to take the day off, but the weather was so good (and promises to turn colder and rainy soon) that I went out and dug bed four. 

Both two and four now have the green manure (forage rye) dug in, along with a few handfuls of slow-release fertiliser pellets. You're supposed to dig compost in a month or two before planting potatoes, but mine isn't ready yet. I picked out stones as I went, and the soil now appears to be good tilth, with some organic matter, which should be ideal. Fingers crossed.

Potatoes are traditionally planted on Good Friday, which is April 6th this year, but mine might go in earlier if it is warm.  They are chitting nicely, and apparently you only need to wait for the soil to warm up.

On with the planting

The garden today

Marathon planting session this morning:
In paper pots:

• 6x Pak Choi
• 6x Purple Choy Sum
• 6x Lamb's Lettuce Elan
• 7x Lettuce Little Gem
• 7x Rocket
• 8x Chilli Peppers

Directly sown in beds:

• 1 row of carrots - half Early Nantes, half Nepal F1 (bed 6)
• 1 row of spring onions White Lisbon Winter Hardy (bed 8)
• 1 row of radishes French Breakfast 3 (bed 8)

I'm planning to use bed six pretty much exclusively for carrots, because I like them, and they are a good productive crop in terms of space usage. I will plant another row every three to four weeks, so with luck I ought to have a continuous supply from June or so. I intend to do this with a lot of crops, sowing in small amounts every few weeks, so I don't have to deal with gluts, and I can be flexible as I find out what grows well and what I most like to eat.

I've been told that the root systems of the broad beans and peas may well survive and put new growth up, despite being apparently dead. I cut off all the above-ground parts, except where new growth is indeed appearing. If they survive, I'll have to find space for all the replacements currently germinating in the greenhouse. Several of each type of pea (Greenshaft and Early Onward) have germinated and shoots are starting to push above the soil. Oh well, can't have too many peas.

I also cut a couple of branches off an overhanging bush, and dug the green manure into bed two.

Green manure

Green manure, cut and ready to dig in

The potatoes currently chitting on the windowsill are going to go into beds two and four, where I was experimenting with green manure. The forage rye I grew there got to about 6" high, growing quite thickly over the area. It needs to be dug in about 4-6 weeks before the following crop, so today I cut it down with shears. I'll let it wilt for a few days, then dig the beds over.

I don't think it was worth it in terms of time and money - the soil appears to be in good condition and green manure is really a treatment for heavy clay soils or nutrient-poor soils, so I think I just made a couple of extra tasks for myself. Next year I doubt I'll bother with green manure.

Murdah, Holmes!?

Just before I left on Thursday, a parcel containing ten strawberry plants arrived in the post. I followed the instructions and soaked the roots, then placed them in shallow holes loosely covered in soil, to keep them damp until I got back.

Sadly, there wasn't anything left when I went to plant them out - a few shreds of leaf was all that remained. Something had dug them all up and eaten them.

Cauli and turnip seedlings, garlic growth

Cauliflower seedlings, 12 days old

After a few days  away, the first of the seeds have started putting forth shoots in the paper pots. As I feared, they were quite dried out by the time I got back, but not fatally I hope. So far most of the cauliflowers have appeared, and a few of the turnips are also visible.

14-week old garlic plants

The most successful of the 2011 sowing has been the garlic - pictured here after 14 weeks in the soil. The onions are less vigorous, but still growing. The kale and cabbages are mostly holding on, but not growing very strongly, and a few have been eaten, probably by pigeons. The autumn planting of broad beans and peas appears to have perished entirely.

More early planting

Pots with germinating seeds

A few days ago I watched 'Fort Apache', and while doing so I rolled another 70-odd paper pots.

Today I sowed more seeds, again varieties which should be started in March, but I'm taking a chance that the weather will continue mild. I've only done small batches of each, so I have plenty more seeds if these ones are killed by a hard frost.

The varieties are:

• 6x Spinach Samich F1
• 6x Beetroot Chioggia Pink
• 6x Basil Lettuce Leaf
• 12x Turnip Rubin
• 12x Cabbage Greyhound

To replace the original planting of broad beans, which I don't think will recover from the frost, I've planted six more of the Aguadulce variety in peat pots, also in the greenhouse, and six directly into bed five, since the lamb's lettuce there seems not to have germinated.

Tuber Mirum

Watching... waiting...

No sooner had I finished the paper pots and had a cup of tea, there was a knock on the door and my seed potatoes had arrived. (They were brought by a courier man in a van, obviously, they didn't make their own way here.)

 Checking on the excellent Grow Your Own forum, it seems that many gardeners have already started chitting their potatoes. Apparently, at the very least this prevents mould and weak, white, spindly shoots, and may also increase yield and shorten the time until the spuds are ready to lift. So I put them out in egg-boxes on a cool, well-lit, airy window sill. The sheet of advice that came with the potatoes said to place them 'blunt end' up, but I'd read somewhere that you place them with the majority of eyes uppermost. This was easier than trying to decide which was the blunt end. I think the potatoes have already decided which way they want to grow - one end usually has many spiky little eyes, and the other end usually has one, which looks different. I expect that one is the bud of the tap-root.

There are two varieties of potatoes here, Epicure, which is a first early (ready as soon as June, possibly), and King Edward, which is a maincrop, cropping from August. I got a 1.5 Kg bag of each variety, and that came to 23 Epicure and 24 King Edward.

Busy morning

Making paper pots

First batch - leeks, cauliflowers, and two varieties of peas

Since the weather is very mild at the moment, and the long-term forecast says it will probably continue mild, I decided to try getting some veg off to an early start. I chose things that are supposed to be planted in March, and will keep them in the greenhouse for the first month or two. The veg chosen for this early experiment are leeks (Carlton F1), cauliflowers (All the Year Round), and two varieties of peas (Early Onward and Greenshaft).

For Christmas I got a wooden tool for making biodegradable pots out of newspaper, pictured right. A strip of newspaper about 4" wide is wrapped round the top part with about 1.5" sticking out, which is folded under and crushed against the bottom part of the tool.

They seem to stay together quite well. Obviously they won't be very strong when wet, but I will be able to leave them in their trays until it's time to plant them out, when the pots will be transferred whole to the beds - no need to unwrap them, the newspaper will just decompose in the ground.

Since the volume of earth in each is quite small, and the paper will wick water away, there may be problems with them drying out. Time will tell.

Raspberry plant

I also planted out the raspberry I got from the neighbours. I put plenty of slow-release fertilizer pellets in the hole, to help it along.

Some raspberry varieties produce fruit on the new year's growth, and some on year-old wood - if mine is the latter I wont see any raspberries until 2013. Hope it's the former!

Lettuce bed

New bed, intended for lettuce

I finished digging a new bed today, which I'd started a while ago. Frost delayed more work for some time, but the last few days have been mild and the ground has now thawed out. This bed is intended for lettuce, rocket, and other salad leaves - it is more shaded than the other beds, and lettuce doesn't need full summer sun.

Leaf blowers = evil

Spring-tine rake. Low-tech and effective.

This is a miscellaneous rant, because there's not much to do in the garden at the moment. It's been too frosty recently, and there's now a couple of inches of snow over everything.

So, compare two instruments for sweeping up fallen leaves. The old-fashioned spring-tine rake, and the electric or petrol-driven leaf blower. I believe that the differences in these two tools illustrate many of the serious errors in our society's attitudes towards the environment, sustainability and human labour which are quite likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation.

The technology for making a rake has been around for about 3000 years, when wire was invented. Rows of wires are supported by a simple frame - pieces of metal with holes in them, also very low-tech, and attached to a stick - possibly the lowest technology tool there is. Rakes are simple, easy to produce and use, robust, and effective. Leaf blowers are constructed from dozens of plastic and metal parts, all of which are precision engineered, which has a high environmental cost. They cannot be made using simple metal- and wood-working skills, and all but the simplest repairs will require new parts sourced from the original manufacturer.

The first point of comparison is clearly in the rake's favour in terms of the environmental impact of construction, use, and maintainance.

The second point of comparison is in use - they do similar, but not identical tasks. The aim of each is to move leaves off lawns, but the action of the rake draws leaves towards the user, resulting in a pile which can be easily taken up and put in a wheelbarrow to take to the compost heap, or into sacks for rotting down as leafmold. The leaf blower blows leaves away from the user, and it is less easy, if not impossible, to make a tidy heap of leaves using one. Leaves are transformed into litter, to be whooshed away onto someone else's property, or the public street. By using a conceptually poor tool, a valuable resource is turned into a problem.

Bosch leaf blower. Worse in every respect.

Thirdly, the leaf-blower panders to the dangerous delusion of convenience - the idea that anything that reduces the expenditure of human muscular energy is a good thing, almost irrespective of the cost. In this case, the cost is in far higher environmental impact, and the transformation of a resource into a disposal problem. This is not worth paying for the highly questionable benefit of reducing the gentle exercise involved in raking to mere ambling about holding a gizmo.

Developing leaf blowers was thus a totally misguided project, giving a higher environmental cost, to do a worse job, of less benefit to the user and the land so managed.

Legumes suffering

Frost damaged legumes

The peas and broad beans have suffered from the weather despite it being generally mild, and despite the fact that both were described as extremely hardy varieties. (The peas are Meteor, the beans Aguadulce.)

We had a spell of frost about two weeks ago, then some strong winds, and now another frosty spell is starting. Several of the beans look totally dead, as do about a third of the peas. I will fill in the rows to replace casualties in March or so. Still, I was hoping for better from hardy varieties - the temperature never went below about -2°C, and it was only that cold for a few nights. Hrumph.

Crocuses flowering already

Crocuses starting to flower

The mild winter we've been having here has prompted some crocuses to start flowering - I noticed the shoots about ten days ago. This is early - apparently March is normal, and according to the BBC they can flower in February in mild conditions.
I didn't plant these, they're relics from a previous owner. I wonder what else is under the ground waiting?

Firewood

Chopping logs

Log pile (on fence section to allow air circulation)

A friend delivered about half a ton of logs yesterday, and I spent a fair amount of this morning chopping them and stacking them for seasoning. Seasoning means allowing the logs to dry out - freshly cut wood may contain up to 45% water by weight, and it is unsuitable for burning. Partly this is for the obvious reason that a lot of the energy content of the wood goes to turning the water into steam rather than giving out heat, but also because the fire burns cooler, and the smoke contains heavier molecules of partially burned fuel. These can condense in the chimney, corroding the lining and forming a tarry coating which is much more prone to chimney fires than the dry soot produced at higher temperatures.

Apparently wood can be seasoned in the open, but I intend to cover this pile (somehow) when I've finished splitting the logs. In the meantime, I've stacked the log quarters with the bark side upwards, which should allow the rain to run off without soaking in.

The pile of split logs in the second photo is about half the amount I was given. The rest is made up of smaller diameter pieces, which I won't split at all, and much larger ones. The wider ones I may not be able to split, and some longer ones need to be sawn in two first. Chopping and piling the first half took a couple of hours, and I left the remainder for another day because my arms were tired and the axe wound in my leg was starting to hurt.

New compost bin

New compost bin

Tony, the neighbour whose bow saw I broke (full story), gave me some old sections of fence for firewood. Since the wood was still quite sound, I used some of it to make a new compost bin. This is in an area right at the bottom of the garden (not shown on the layout) which is shaded by large trees, overgrown with ivy, and where the soil is full of half-bricks, old tiles, metal junk and bottles. Because of this I've just been using it for general garden waste - there's a big pile of the turfs I removed to make the beds, and another of woody prunings.

Having more than one compost heap means that I can leave the first to rot down without adding more fresh material, and it will be ready to use sooner.

Give peas a chance

Mesh for pea plants

The peas have been bashed about by the very strong winds last week, and were looking a bit forlorn, so I've given them something to climb up. Next time I will put in the supporting mesh as soon as the peas are in the ground. The canes and mesh are re-used from my  last garden, and since those peas came down with powdery mildew I left the equipment to soak in a fungicide solution before setting it up, in the hope that any spores are killed and I don't introduce a harmful species to this garden.

One of the broad bean plants had its stem broken, so I cut that off to a few inches above ground level. Possibly the root system will have enough stored energy to grow new stems and leaves.

Pruning apple tree

Before pruning

After pruning

January is a good time to prune apple trees, and the one in my garden definitely needed it. When I moved in there were hundreds of very small apples on the ground around the tree, and I hope by giving it a vigorous pruning I will get fewer but larger apples this year.

I found some useful information on pruning on the Royal Horticultural Society's website here, so I had a go. I've probably taken off more than they suggest, but the tree has been neglected for some time and there was a lot of dead wood. There was also a lot of growth which was too high to be able to pick the apples easily, and many branches were too close to each other, rubbing together or tangled together.

Now the structure is much more open, the highest branches have been removed, the lowest ones which were below head-height have also been trimmed back, and there are still plenty of fruit buds on the remaining branches. I left some long branches growing across the garden so that the open area is divided up visually, which should be more appealing to look at.