Friday 6 March 2015

Seed sowing outdoors

Beautiful day!  My husband ran the rotovator over the veg bed again yesterday and the wind dried it this morning.  It was used as horse grazing field for 4 or 5 years previously and we have cut into the turf to develop the veg bed. It is going to be up hill work to get the couch grass out.

Today we directly sowed into the ground beetroot, parsnips,carrots in 30 ft rows.  We may loose some but we may be lucky and get some early food. Our autumn sown onions and garlic are doing well. I may put a row of onion sets next to the carrots tomorrow for a later crop.  I spotted some flower buds on the broad beans today - they are still quite short, probably due to the open nature of our field and the strong winds we have!

The weather  is promising to continue good and my husband started up his mower just to get ready - he is preparing for a flush of grass!

We are expecting a delivery of black membrane tomorrow to line the floor of our polytunnel.  We are going to do this before we put on the plastic so we can pop in and out the sides and fix down the edges.  This membrane will kill the grass while we are finishing off the second set of doors and putting on the plastic.  We need two or three days of calm sunny weather before we can do the covering - may have to wait (patiently).

4 comments:

  1. Have you grown vegetables on a large scale before? You are doing well. My broadbeans Ho in tomorrow with the onions and carrots.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. in 1975-8 we had allotment and a large garden, a few years later my husband ran a landscaping business for a while, several moves later in the 1990s we had a garden centre in rural Wales and grew flowers commercially a few veg. Then for a long time we just had suburban gardens. We are experienced but feel a bit of out of date and are feeling our way back into the fruit and veg. We keep opening old gardening books and comparing to new ones - its quite funny to see what still is considered good practice! Percy Thrower used so many chemicals!

      Delete
  2. we fought on with crouch grass for years at our old place, it was a never ending battle. Still can't see the ground for snow here!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think docks, thistles and dandelion are also going to be a problem. We did some digging today and found some really "narly" roots!

      Delete