Sunday 13 April 2014

2014 Potager Plant-In..

Concerned that time was advancing rapidly but the potager wasn't, we've had a "plant-in" today.

At the time of writing, we've got three rows of seed potatoes (Annabelle), four rows of onion sets (Stuttgarter), two rows of shallots, a row each of carrots (De colmar a coeur  rouge 2), and peas (Kelvedon Wonder) all planted out and ready to go.

We've done the potatoes à la Monty Don, in trenches with compost in the bottom, the seed potatoes resting on this and then filled in and earthed up.

The onions and shallots pretty much take care of themselves as long as they are weeded and watered..

The peas will need the netting putting up to support the plants when they start growing

but it was the carrot seed which fascinated us most. We hadn't realised when we bought it (from Lidl) that it was "seed by the metre".

What an easy way to evenly distribute the tiny seeds! The pack contained around five metres of carrot seed, which wasn't enough to fill the whole row so we finished it off with the same variety but in 'loose seed' form.

It will be interesting to see if there is any significant difference as the two types grow - other than the obvious more even spacing of the seed by the metre, of course!

The salad crop seedlings are divided between the living room and the greenhouse, according to germination times..

But job done for today! Tomorrow we start on the Haricot Vert etc....

3 comments:

GaynorB said...

You have been busy!

Do I remember you saying last year that you were going to scale down the potager this year?

Tim said...

I've tried seed tapes (parsnips) and found they kept coming out of the soil, seeds and all. That was in our allotment which had very light soil. I'll be interested to see how they work here! P.

Colin and Elizabeth said...

Gaynor you remember correctly... and we have by about half!!