1 May 2009
Earthing up potatoes - who knew there could be so many options? Soilman recently posted about his potatoes and asked his readers whether they earth up in one go or bit by bit. Judging by the comments, there is a wide variety of earthing up practice out there.
I mention this because I had been wondering the same thing myself - Soilman rather stole my thunder (but I won’t bear a grudge). Last year, while I was pleased enough with my potato yield, my joy was tinged with a certain amount of shock when my friend achieved far better results than me. You will understand my frustration when I tell you that she got her seed potatoes from me (spares), shoved ‘em in the ground a bit late and kept asking me what to do with them. So that would be my complete novice, knows nothing whatsoever about growing vegetables friend who achieved far better results than me. Given that both lots of pots were grown using my expertise (I use the word only loosely), how come she managed to harvest more from a single plant than I got from an entire row? Was it only beginner’s luck?
The answer (I am sure) is all in the earthing up - she did hers bit by bit, over and over and over again. Me? I did a couple of - if I’m honest - cursory scrapes of soil around the emerging plants. I wondered about this, but could find no reference in any of my many gardening books to earthing up affecting yield, it’s all about avoiding green, poisonous tubers.
Rightly or wrongly, I think there’s more to it than that, so my potato plans for this year are somewhat different. I’ve planted fewer rows (11 as opposed to 13), but the conditions are different. I have dug very deeply into the beds, even removing a fair bit of the soil/compost and storing it in bags for a little while. As they grow I have been earthing them up regularly, perhaps three or four times so far, adding soil and compost from the stored bags (so much easier than using what is in the bed itself) and now moving onto new bags of well-rotted manure.
It may be my imagination (or just optimism), but the plants seem much more vigorous than last year and I am hopeful of a better harvest. I also suspect that this method might actually allow me to grow the plants slightly closer together in future as I don’t have to allow for the scraping/digging of earthing up from the bed. Watch this space.
Filed under: Harvest
20 April 2009
Last year, my strawberry plants were the most productive things in the garden. I got kilos of fruit off them over a period of couple of months or so and they also produced something silly like 50 runners for propagation. Plonked on our garden wall, the growbags proved to be perfect for them. I had worried that in that positionthey would be prone to bird attack, but that proved not to be the case. Likewise, there was no need for any of that tedious covering with straw when the fruit started to appear. Watering was the only slight worry, but that was easily dealt with by setting up an irrigation system.
This year, the stage is set for more strawberry success. I have 3 growbags of new strawberry plants and 1 of 2-year-old plants. The elderly plants which last year produced so much fruit have been discarded.
They are sitting on the garden wall, soaking up the sun and thriving (which is more than can be said for this year’s garlic - more about that another time). There are flowers starting to appear and already I am dreaming of ice cream to come.
Filed under: Fruit
18 April 2009
To the uneducated eye it could appear as though this blog is in its death throes. No posts since January? Shocking.
If I can just explain… I know I don’t talk about work here in any detail, but suffice to say that working in a team where three people have left has kept me pretty busy. Add to that my PhD studies which are taking up a lot of my time and energy - this is likely to increase over the next 18 months as I work towards completion. And did I mention that this year would be a year of music? I did? Well, that’s been going really well, but all those rehearsals and concerts are somewhat time-consuming.
Fear not. Pumpkin Soup has often been in my mind and I do still have high hopes and big plans for it. Aside from anything else, I am hoping to get into a more ‘bite-sized’ habit of sitting down to write rather than having to write my 80,000 word thesis in one massive binge session. My plan is that if I can use P’Soup as another place to write just anything then that can only help.
So, thank you for all your encourgaing comments (back in January!) and for your forbearance. You shouldn’t have to wait quite so long for the next post. Still, the long wait only makes the meal itself all the more delicious, doesn’t it?
Filed under: Mulch, Writing
17 January 2009
In spite of the fact that I spent some time in the garden today, there’s not a great deal to report to do with growing things right now. So unless you really want to read a post about how I spent 15 minutes wrestling with the shed door to get it open, I will indulge myself and write about other things for the time being. Well, I need to ease myself gently back in to this blogging lark.
I promised you a brief update about the various things we’ve been up to over the time of the pumpkin hiatus and that’s going to start here with selected highlights of our new year trip to Whitby.
I really love Whitby so when we were planning where to go for new year with friends and struggled to find somewhere suitable (Barcelona was our first choice) a stay on the Yorkshire coast seemed like a really good idea. Of course, I hadn’t factored in the searingly cold weather, but it would be churlish to complain of that when everything else was so lovely.
After the huge amounts of food and drink at Christmas it was great to get away to coats walks, sea air and huge amounts of food and drink. Well, we were on holiday. The only real blot was that Owen came down with some nasty vomiting thing on new year’s eve for a couple of days. I’d had it just after Christmas so I suppose it was not entirely unexpected, but it did mean that he was curled up in bed that evening while the rest of us celebrated in a little bistro near where we were staying in Hinderwell. Not the best start to the year.
I’m not much of one for resolutions, but having taken a leaf out of Stonesoup’s book, I am planning to make 2009 a year of music. I’ll let you know soon how that’s going as well as updating you on my garden plans and marathon soup making sessions. In the meantime, what have you all been getting up to while I’ve been away?
Filed under: Holiday postcards
8 January 2009
I’ve been gone a very long time, haven’t I? Sorry about that. I tend to hibernate at this time of year and that tendency was compounded by me feeling completely overwhelmed and stressed at work leaving no space in my brain for soupiness. Please forgive me.
I am just about emerging from my wintry state and am venturing back into the world in many different ways, one of which is by starting to write here again. I’ll fill you in over the next few days about what we’ve been up to, including our new year trip to Whitby where we met this lovely little chap.
So, it’s late, but happy new year to all my readers (if any of you are still around!). Thanks for your patience.
Filed under: Mulch
10 September 2008
Today the sun has shone and there has been no rain (shh, whisper it!). I’m trying to make the most of it as things are going to hot up at work very soon and there will be much less time for gardening or blogging. Or sanity. Trouble is, there’s not a great deal to be done at the moment except for important tidying jobs that are, frankly, dull. At least there are still a couple of nice flowers to look at.
Filed under: Seasons - summer
9 September 2008
Our atumn raspberries are on their way. Ideally, I would like a load of them to be ripe when my Mum visits next week as they are her favourite fruit which is why I put them in the potager in the first place. Fingers crossed.
Filed under: Fruit
8 September 2008
On a recent post of mine, easygardener left a nice comment and mentioned that the garden looked neat.
Ahem.
I think it’s only fair to say that this is not an accurate reflection of life in our garden. The camera is not supposed to lie, but there are a multitude of sins hidden in those ‘First of the month’ shots. They could remain that way, but one of my pet hates is being shown only perfect plots. I find it so disheartening. And, given that my approach has never been from a position of expert (I don’t have much clue about what I’m doing, though I am learning), I don’t want to give an impression of having effortlessly achieved perfection in the garden.
So here’s a selection of current garden sins. Browse and be heartened.
First up is my bed of scrappy beets, competing (and losing) with a variety of weeds.
When I do get around to weeding or trimming or generally tidying up, there needs to be a place for the weeds and trimmings to go. You would think that it would be easy to put everything straight into the compost, wouldn’t you? Apparently not. For some reason I make a habit of throwing the discarded plant matter onto the paths and leaving it there for days on end. Lovely.
Next is one of the many piles of quarry tiles in different parts of the garden. I use these in different beds at different times for subdivision, but once I have finished with them they have to go somewhere else. Sometimes end up scattered over the paths which is not only very untidy but rather dangerous.
And finally (because there is only so much shame I can endure in one sitting), here is the disaster that is my leek bed. Scrappy leeks and weed heaven. In fairness, it’s not entirely my fault that this bed is in such a state. Our local fox likes to use this particular bed on her way through the garden and does not seem to mind trampling my leeks to bits in the process.
Now then, confession is no fun without company - I want to know all about your garden eyesores. ‘Fess up.
Filed under: Mulch
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