Category: Uncategorized

Project 81: 7 – Knowing your onions

The garden isn’t idle in October

My 5 rows of onions were planted about 3 weeks ago and some have already sprouted. I wrongly assumed that October would be very quiet for gardening. Last week I planted my Provence Wight garlic and my Elephant garlic but I imagine it will be some time before they decide to put in an appearance.

I’ve seen a few videos about planting some cauliflower and broad beans to over winter in the greenhouse so I might give that a shot.

Next month the rhubarb crowns, raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes arrive. The peas and lettuce are doing well in the greenhouse.

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Project 81: 3 – Buying

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness was looking at the wrong seed catalogue

There is something delightfully old-school about sitting down with a paper seed catalogue and planning your garden for next year. It’s adding the tags, considering the varieties, amending the plan, thinking about it, and coming back to the catalogue after some rumination.

That’s why I put in a triple-digit value order with King’s Seeds—they sent me a nice big A4 catalogue. Allowing for about 10% of other seeds I have been given, 90% of next year’s plan comes from King’s Seeds. I will see how they fair, but I will also admit if I don’t follow the instructions.

In addition to seeds, I have rhubarb and asparagus crowns, four types of seed potato, and horseradish thongs, which will be dispatched as they become available. The best part of this exercise was learning that a fledgling horseradish is called a thong.

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Project 81: 1 – Starting

A failure to plan, is planning for failure

I’ve been gardening for two years. I’ve also been making mistakes for two years and I’m slowly fixing them. I started out with the decorative garden. Then fruit trees were added and they do well with little interference from me. The herb border which was added this year was started with twenty £1 pound potted herbs from Facebook Marketplace. All are doing well and other than a little light watering they are on their way.

But now it’s time to think about the edible garden.

I started trying to find a planning app to help and in the end I settled on Grow Veg. It’s a good desk-top based program which has a lot of features but they are usable and intuitive. The introductory video shows you how to plan a garden. The plant list and plant families help you plan future gardens. You can tell it which plants are in the ground now.

It also allows you to publish your garden online so you can share it. Mine is here.

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