We have been busy in the lottie the past few days, taking advantage of the lovely weather. Everything seems to be going according to schedule//we are planting wave after wave of our veg at home and when ready, planting it out in the lottie plots. The mulch covering the quadrants is being peeled/back and seeds are sown and plantlets are planted in their place. We have had some damage from mice and rats already and thus we decided not to grow sweetcorn this year and switched into Plan B mode for the plot allocated for the sweetcorn. Getting down to business-- We began with the strawbs. We cleaned the beds and gave some food, then watered then in generously. The spuds had to be planted, so I made the furrows with my hand plough...I left them open for several hours in the sun to warm-up the soil, then used a bulb planter to make holes in the bottoms of the furrows to plant the chitted potato´s in. When the furrows were good and warm, then I planted the spuds, standing on a plank on top of some of the hills. You can see this on the following pic. Next, the paths were ready for an cleaning - up. We hacked the edged tidy, mowed the paths, aerated them, gave a bit of blood meal and then a good, long soaking with water. There are again so many mice that we thought it wise to plant our peas and then surround them with an as hoc cage. (We had already lost seven plants from the broad bean plantlets). A closer look at this jury/rigged cage. Remember the paths that we worked on...look at the raggedy-Ann edges of the path. It is why they had to be cut neatly. As I said, we began rolling back the mulch to work on the patches. We have planted some spinach, Swiss Chard and onions here. Some of the spinach and Swiss Chard did not come up, but fear not...we had back-ups at home on the windowsill, so we filled in the gaps. It looks like a mess now, but the plants will improve if the slugs do not get them. We had planted Caspucijners out but only two seeds germinated. So then...we had to plant more. For this chore, we planted them in four pvc gutters. When it is time to plant, we will make a gully in the soil and then slide the Capucijners out of the gutter, into the gully...and Bob´s yer uncle!
I'm going to start using that phrase 'Bob's yer Uncle'. New to me, but I understand it's more common in Europe. Makes me chuckle. Hope you can escape the mouse/rat issues in the future - cats maybe? Although you would have a whole new set of problems probably with all that lovely loose soil around.
And what did you plant in the PVC planters ? They say that slugs love beer so plant some cans level with the soil and pour about halfway up with beer ! Slugs get the beer and drown ! I have read this over the years but do not have slugs here so not sure it works !
Hiya Mart--What I planted in the pvc guttering were purple-podded peas. The plantlets will be so easy to plant-out in the plot when they are ready.
I always thought that "Bobs yer uncle" was a Canadian expression? Garden is looking good Sjoerd! I can't wait to get planting this year, sadly the weather has not been co-operating.
Hi Mart--I planted purple-podded peas in the pvc guttering. You asked what bloom that was--it was a bloom of an apple tree-- look at it now! Thanks so much, Netty-- I just know the expression is an english language one. If that is american, canadian or british, I don't know.
