Schedule for next year

OK, so here's the plan for 2010:

Jan buy seeds impatiens, wallflower, dwarf wallflower, runner beans. Turn last year's compost.

Feb sow impatiens seed indoors. Turn last year's compost.

March mark the position of the daffodils in the front garden in preparation for the GREAT FRONT GARDEN CLEAROUT (see Sep/Oct). Buy seed potatoes, and chit some charlotte potatoes from the supermarket. Chit large potatoes for a good crop. Sow tomato seed indoors. Sow wallflower seed in pots outdoors for planting out later. Plant first batch of spuds. Sow antirrinhum seed in pots indoors. Sow seed from back garden 'mystery plant'. Turn last year's compost.

April plant second batch of spuds. Sow lettuce seed (see entry for 09 Apr 2009). When weather permits, put out tomato and antirrinhum plants during the day. At the end of April sow runner bean seeds. Turn last year's compost.

May collect primrose seed and sow them. Plant third batch of spuds. Plant out impatiens, tomato and antirrinhum plants. Last year's compost should now be ready for use.

June plant fourth batch of spuds. Sow second batch of lettuce seed.

July plant fifth (and final for the year) batch of spuds. Check for ripening plums. Pick, cook and freeze James Grieve apples.

Aug sow dwarf wallflower seed.

Sep/Oct clear out the border in the front garden, but keep the mystery pink and white-flowered plants that you've been splitting and replanting over the past couple of years. In fact, split and replant some more. And keep the daffodils.

Oct plant up front garden with primroses, forget-me-not and dwarf wallflower. Buy crocus bulbs and plant in front garden. Apply last year's compost to the beds around the garden in preparation for gardening, 2011.

Throughout the year try to keep the foxes out of the garden!

Review of the year

I was very pleased with my spud efforts. The spud bags worked well, and the spuds in the garden were fine. I realise now that the spud planting season is longer than I thought, so I plan to do more staggered planting next year. Not sure whether I will plant in bags next year, as I have prepared a larger garden plot for spuds in 2010.

The foxes were a constant headache. Although they haven't been as evident in the last couple of months, there was an occasion last week where I noticed they had dug up a nicely established foxglove plant. I had a spare plant with which I replaced it, only to discover the following morning that it had also been dug out.

I have been trying to prevent the foxes from entering the garden by placing garden canes parallel with the fences that I know they can jump, in such a way as to hopefully prevent them from jumping down. I've also been using large twigs and/or chicken wire to try to block other known entry points. The foxglove incidents demonstrate the I haven't yet created a fox-proof garden, but I will keep trying to exclude them. I hope to see a fox in the garden at some point, then note how it leaves. However as mentioned above they are not so evident in the garden in the daytime now as in the summer.

Another thing I didn't achieve this year was identifying the first strawberry plant on each runner. Apparently the first plant on each runner is the only one which will fruit the following year. I had intended to move the first plant on each runner to spread them evenly over the strawb patch, but the runners were so convoluted that it was hard to identify the first plant, so I just guessed and moved a few. Next year the runners are going to be growing off the patch. I might need to think about creating a new strawb patch for 2011. Also, apparently if you remove the flowers from a strawberry plant in its first fruiting year, the following year will see the plant give a much larger crop than normal.

I was pleased with my efforts in growing primroses from seed, but disappointed that all the new plants had purple flowers. Next year I'll try to germinate seed from the yellow-flowered primroses, which should produce plants with red/yellow flowers. I must also ensure that the pots in which I germinate the seeds are protected from the foxes, as this year they turned over the pot in which I was germinating seed from blue primroses and I lost them all. I'll also try to split the existing yellow plants so that I have more in subsequent years.

Next year I plan to do some crop rotation, so in the garden where I grew the spuds this year, I will grow runner beans. This will be another first for me.

Another hard frost

Ice rose

Fox tracks

Snow

Roses in the snow

Hard frost last night

Around the frosty garden

Foxglove, rose and primrose today

Aucuba update

Primrose genetics

Some of the primroses that I grew from seed this year are now flowering. The seeds were collected from plants with red/yellow flowers, and all the flowers on the new generation are purple/yellow as shown below...


My experience with primrose propagation is that seed from plants with yellow flowers...


grow into plants that have red/yellow flowers...


and, as discussed above, seeds from red/yellow plants give rise to purple/yellow-flowered plants. I didn't know that I would get purple/yellow flowers, I'm a little disappointed that I did because purple doesn't show up very well on gloomy days.

Anyway, next year I'll try sowing seed from the purple flowers.

BTW, because the foxes knocked over the pot in which I was growing seed from a blue-flowered primrose, I think I only have two plants from blue seed. Neither of them have flowered yet, so I'm eagerly awaiting to learn what colour they'll be.

New compost bin

My new composter was delivered today. In previous years I have stopped putting waste into the original composter in October (except for leaves which I continue to add), then turn the compost once a month so that it's ready for use in May.

I continued to put any suitable waste into a trench, covered with a sheet of plastic, until May when I empty the composter and transfer the contents of the trench into the composter.In addition to assisting the composting process, the plastic stops pieces of cardboard and paper from blowing around.

However, this year the foxes have chewed through the plastic and pulled off the wire netting which I thought would keep them off, so I decided to buy another composter.

First frost of the season

Woke up to the first frost of the Autumn today.

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Saw a strange thing in the sky today. It was about 12:30pm, and the sky was clear apart from a couple of wispy clouds. I looked up at a plane and a little way over noticed something glinting in the sun. Whatever it was appeared to be at a high altitude so that I couldn't see any detail, just a bright point of light which I'm assuming resulted from the sun reflecting off a surface of the object. The light wasn't constant or regular, the impression I had was of an object tumbling across the sky, catching the sunlight intermittently as it went. I watched it for about 5 minutes as it slowly moved along. Then I went to get my camera, although the object appeared so small that I don't think it would register on a photo, but when I got back more cloud had appeared and I had lost the UAP.

Amphibian

I was about to plunge my spade into the compost when I spotted this amphibious intruder (not sure whether it's a frog or toad). I eventually persuaded it to leave the compost and last saw it heading into the undergrowth.

Tomato plants pulled up

Before pulling up the tomato plants I harvested the remaining fruit. The green tomatoes may ripen indoors.

New veg bed in preparation

I have uncovered a vegetable patch in the garden that had for some years been covered with black plastic sheeting, gravel and paving stones. The soil had become very compacted, but I dug it over today following yesterday's rain, and it was fairly easy to break up. I'll be digging it over some more and adding compost.

This is where I plan to grow potatoes next year.

Final batch of spuds

Today I harvested the last 2 Pentland plants.

More spuds

Wallflowers potted up

More spuds

Lupin seeds

Collected some lupin seeds as a 'backup'. After collecting, I put them in a paper envelope.

More spuds

Fox attack on bag of compost

Primroses potted on

I potted on some of the primrose seedlings (the pots nearest the wall in the above pic). The five leftmost pots contain plants grown from seeds of red/yellow-flowered plants. In the batch of four to the right, the two on the left are from, I think, seeds from a blue-flowered plant, and the remaining two pots contain yellow plants which are actually ones which I potted up last year.

The three pots furthest from the wall contain wallflower seedlings.

Lettuce update

Despite my fears that it was too late when I sowed the second batch of lettuce seed, they did go on to develop into full-size plants.

In front of the lettuce are two pots of foxglove seedlings which I must do something with...

More spuds harvested

Dug up another Pentland today.

Maybe it wasn't tomato blight...

My fears of tomato blight appear to have been unfounded, as the fruit has been fine. Maybe the leaves became discoloured due to natural die-back. Some gardeners actually recommend removing the leaves once the fruit starts ripening.

Primroses split and replanted

The primroses which I potted up last year have grown and were becoming rather congested. The first pic above shows how they looked in March, the second pic shows how they were at the beginning of this week.

I split them and have replanted them in the front garden. I will be repotting some of the primroses I sowed in May (see below how they look now) into the now vacant pots.

One thing I learned while splitting the primroses is that it's better to split them by hand - I originally tried splitting them with a spade, but on a couple of occasions I only succeeded in separating the top of the plant from its roots.


In the pic above the pots nearest the camera contain foxgloves.

Another batch of spuds harvested

Today I harvested 2 of the Pentland plants.

Final spud bag of 2009 harvested

Today I harvested the final potato bag of this year. This bag contained Pentlands - quite a good crop. I plan to harvest the remaining potatoes growing in the garden over the next few days, as the first frost cannot be too far away. I'm not sure what effect a frost would have on the crop, but it's best not to take any risks.

Foxes dig up spuds

While watering the spuds in the garden this evening I noticed that the foxes had dug up some spuds from one of the plants. I placed paving slabs and old roof tiles around to try and deter further raids, but from my experience with the strawberries, now they know there's food there, the foxes will be back.

B*st*rds.

Spud bag harvested

I harvested the first of the replanted potato bags (the one on the left in the pic above). IIRC it contained 3 Charlotte and 1 Pentland seed potatoes. Crop wasn't too bad.

Wallflowers germinating

...but no sign of activity among the seeds I gathered from plants last spring (the pot on the left).

Spud updates

I think the time for harvesting this batch of spuds may be approaching (I said that about two weeks ago as well).

None of the plants in the bags have flowered, but that may be because they were planted rather late in the season.

Tomato blight?

I think my 'main' tomato plants may now have blight. Not sure what to do. The fruit is unaffected so far, but I don't have room to pick and store all the fruit - I'm overrun with tomatoes indoors as it is. Will wait and see how things develop.

Foxgloves potted up

The foxglove seed I sowed on the 3rd of August has germinated like crazy. I potted some up today. In previous years I have just scattered the seed around the garden, but I thought I'd try this approach for a change.

Foxes attack lettuce

A fox has attacked the lettuce plants, digging up those at each end of the trough.

Wallflower seeds sown

I sowed some wallflower seeds today. The variety is 'Vivaldi'. In the pot on the left (with the piece of cane in) I sowed some seed which I gathered from the same variety of plants growing in the garden in the spring. The seeds I gathered were smaller than I expected, so they may not be viable. We'll see.