h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Vegetables are a bit of a passion of mine

Since the spring has *officially* started in my Perthshire garden, I decided to share some of the of veg gardening...

The veg garden is 15m x 5m. It is made up of 3 long beds each 1m wide, with paths between, so that I can reach across the beds without having to tread on the soil at all.

In addition there is heaps of indoor south-facing space, including an unheated greenhouse. I use the indoor space to grow vegs and herbs that won't stand our short growing seasons and cool temperatures - chillis, capsicums, cucumbers, basil, coriander, tomatoes, peabeans, even aubergines if I can fit them in.

All my plants are grown from organic seed and I add no chemicals. The garden is fertilised using solely home-made compost and horse manure from a friend who only grazes her ponies on unimproved pasture.

Tubs and troughs I fill with commercial composts, with added well-rotted manure and some of my own compost. The commercial composts do inevitably contain some chemicals, but I don't have a big enough process going here to use my own for everything.

I always work from a plan of the veg beds, showing what is going to grow where. In this way I make sure that I don't forget to sow anything and it ensures that the 4 year rotation plan is easy to follow.

So what's happened so far?

Feb 14th: I sowed the first seeds of 2004

Using a 50:50 mix of John Innes (JI) Seed compost and JI No 2 compost, I sowed capsicum, chillis, broad beans, and sweet peas. All in small pots or divided plastic containers, labelled with variety and sowing date. Also carrots in a trough, for early greenhouse-grown baby carrots.

The capsicum and chillis are in the airing cupboard, because they need a fast germination in heat. They should be showing in a week. The carrots, broad beans and sweet peas are covered in a quadruple layer of horticultural fleece, too keep them warm, and are on the (un-heated) greenhouse staging. They'll take a couple of weeks to germinate.

I use a 50:50 mix of compost because all of these, once germinated, will need to stay in those pots and grow some, before they get potted on or planted out. So they need some decent nutrients.

If I had used pure seed compost, the growing period available to the seedlings would have been shorter - because of fewer nutrients in the compost.

JI does contain some peat. Whilst I abhor the over extraction of peat from our ever-reducing peat bogs, having attempted to grow seeds and seedlings in the non-peat alternatives, I have to say that you do need some peat. I try to keep it to a minimum though. Coir and wood-based seed composts will not support seedlings effectively in comparison.

I will collect a load of horse manure this afternoon, to complete the fertilisation of the soil in the veg beds. I fork it into the top 6 inches of the soil and do so early in the spring, so that the worms can get to work and integrate it all before I come along in April and plant vegs into it.

This does mean that I will have to weed all the veg beds before I plant out, but it's a small price to pay for the work of the worms.

Happy gardening!


Frenchbean

F/b, you have convinced me that I need horse manure for my vegetable plot. Now all I have to do is find someone with a horse.

Have you ever used mushroom compost? There is a mushroom farm about 25 miles from here and I was told that the compost is available to anyone who wants to load it and haul it off. But another person told me that it isn't really very good quality. So I don't know whether to try it or not.

H

My Dad used mushroom compost, as well as horse manure.

He reckoned it was excellent for the beds that need slightly less *fierce* fertiliser, like for carrots, parsnips, and especially good for brassicas, because it's more alkaline than manure.

The added bonus was that he'd pick it up from the mushroom farm a month or so before he spread it on the beds, and he'd get a really good crop of mushrooms from it!!

Most of my friends with horses are desperate to get rid of the manure and they'll give it away if I go and collect it. If you phoned any stables, I'm sure you'd get some.

Watch out and don't get manure mixed with sawdust though: it's very acidic and may be too strong for the vegetables. Manure from stables using straw or hay as bedding is best. Or manure picked up straight from the fields and heaped: that's great too.


F/b

What is the weather like in Scotland right now? We're at that in between winter and spring stage. It's warm enough to make me want to be outside planting something, but still too cold for that to be a good idea. We sometimes have snow in April.

h

Oh we're having fabulous weather H

It's that inbetween time here too, but unusually it's really sunny throughout the day. Despite dire forecasts of snow, it's missing us at the moment. For 2 weeks now we've had frosts at night, then cold cold sunny days.

All the plants in my garden have buds, just waiting to break open, but it'll need to warm up a lot before they do.

On the other hand, the birds are all getting very sexy, so spring is definitely in the air!

I used to dislike February most of all the months, but these days I love it: spring really is just about to happen and I've started sowing seeds, so I can watch the magic of germination indoors at least.

I'll be sowing tomatoes this weekend coming

Do you get it really cold in Texas? I always think of it as a hot state, but I wonder if being so far from the sea means that you don't benefit from its equalising effect?

F/b

29th February:

We have had wall-to-wall sunshine for a couple of weeks now and the spring really feels about to burst upon us. It was glorious today and I spent a happy day outside.

First off I went into the greenhouse with my solar radio to listen to while I sowed the next lot of seeds.

All this lot went into 100% seed compost, because I only want them to grow to 4 leaves in it, then I'll transplant them into pots or straight into the garden.

Tomatoes - Money Maker are a medium-sized tomato, great for green tomato chutney, as well as being good eating when they're red. I also sowed some Gardeners' Delight, which are sweet little cherry tomatoes and unbeatable for salads in my opinion. Once they're a couple of cm tall, I'll transplant the seedlings into individual pots.

Cauliflower - All Year Round are a good variety which lives up to its name. I'll sow a handful every month until May, to give me caulis right through from July to October. Unusually I prick these out into bigger pots once they're 2 or 3 cm tall. Most folk put them straight into the garden at that size (or even sow them out there), but I have voracious voles that will eat anything soft and tender in the spring, so I grow them on indoors until they're pretty sturdy plants, then plant them out protected by a yoghurt pot collar. I think caulis are one of those veg that you just don't know about until you've tasted one out of the garden. The comparison with a commercially-grown one is night and day.

Leaf beet - or spinach beet, this is a great alternative to spinach, because the stalks are thick and tasty as a veg in their own right (great steamed, cooled and sprinkled with lemon dressing and mint as a salad). I'll prick these out into the garden as soon as they're a few cm tall. I have a vole-proof patch of garden, protected by a buried plastic fence, in which I grow the particularly vulnerable crops, such as spinach.

Beetroot - Boltardy is good for this climate because I have to give everything a long growing season, so it has to be a variety that is bolt resistant. I sow these into newspaper pots and egg boxes, so that when I transplant them into the garden the whole pot can go in, therefore not disturbing the roots.

All the seeds I sowed 2 weeks ago are germinating now. The broad beans are looking great, and I have a 100% success rate. So there'll be at least 50 plants to go out! The capsicums and chillis are just poking their heads up through the soil: they always take a while. Sweetpeas are up too.

This time of year is full of promise!

F/b