compost mixing

Today, with the help of my son, I managed to lift off one of the compost bins to get at what was inside. The stuff was so tightly packed that it took us about ten minutes of rocking and banging before we could slide the thing up and out of the way. This is what a naked dalek looks like :)

As you can see, apart from some semi-rotted material at the top, this is really rich crumbly goodness and will be mixed with other ingredients to form the potting compost for my containers.

Being in a compost frame of mind I also dug into one of the leaf mould cages.

Looking good, but when I got right into it there was hardly any visible leaf structure at all. Just what the garden doctor ordered!

good quality leaf mould

With all that material to go at I spent the afternoon mixing up various potting composts. The one for carrots and parsnips is finely sieved and has added sand but I just use fairly rough stuff for the potato containers. Roll on spring!

things are improving!!

Temperatures reached the dizzy heights of 5˚C this afternoon so I could contain my impatience no longer and attacked the compost heap to fill four containers ready for the first crops of peas and broad beans. Said containers are now in the greenhouse to warm up a bit before I sow the seeds. Even with a February sowing it’s usually mid June before I get a harvest. This year I'm going to try and get a good succession of broad bean pickings like I do with the peas. Trouble is with limited space it's difficult to get enough of everything.


As I was digging my cheeky little friend popped in for a free meal.

Before this cold spell started the chives had poked their heads up but since then the outside plants have just sulked. One clump I brought into the greenhouse is now big enough to start harvesting. Amazing what a difference a bit of shelter makes.

greenhouse chives

It's not much but chives are always the first of the new year's crops to be picked. Overwintered salad stuff doesn't count because that was really last year's crop.

spuds and chips

Another sharp frost last night and, although the ground is still frozen, the temperature in the greenhouse reached 14˚C by mid afternoon. Perfect for pottering so I sowed another tray of leeks to go in the propagator, some AYR lettuce and more mustard and cress for the kitchen windowsill. If you are going to sow sprouting seeds don’t waste your money on those little packets you buy in the shops but go for bulk buys, it’s much cheaper. I get my sprouting seeds in 100g bags but you can get larger quantities from some suppliers.

My first crop of broad beans each year is usually from seed sown in containers in the greenhouse. These are kept in the warm and gradually acclimatized as spring comes. Trouble is at the moment my compost heap is frozen solid so I dug down into the centre where it was fine. With two tubs filled and warming in the greenhouse I’ll be ready to sow the seed in about a week.

Finally my seed potato order arrived from JBA and all the bags look fine. The only trouble is I’ve run out of chitting space. Most window sills are taken up with seed trays as once they're germinated and poking their heads up I take them out of the propagator to get them used to cooler conditions. Still too cold to leave them overnight in the unheated greenhouse though.

It was so nice in the sun we had a run out to Silloth for fish and chips. Here's a pic of a gull trying to stare us into sharing our lunch......no chance.

sowing and chitting

I sowed some alpine strawberry seeds today. The packet had been in the freezer for a couple of weeks as the seeds need a prolonged cold spell to break their dormancy. They are very small so my normal practice of sowing seeds individually went by the board as I just scattered them on the surface of damp compost. They shouldn’t need much heat to get them to germinate but they are a first for me so it's a case of wait and see.

The idea with the alpine strawberries is to use them as ground cover around the currant and gooseberry bushes. If I’m going to have ground cover plants I might as well have something I can eat!


All of my onion and leeks trays in the propagator are now showing strong germination which is good as I really need the space for other early crops. A sowing of AYR cauliflower is first on the list then the first of the summer cabbages, to be followed later in the month with the first sowings of tomatoes and peppers. I've lost some of the early sowings in previous years but the gentle heat of the propagator should solve that problem.

My potato order from JBA has been delayed as they won’t send them out during hard frosts so I picked up a bag of Lady Christl in town which I now have chitting in the spare bedroom. These will be the first of the first earlies and will go in containers in the greenhouse to give us a crop from early May....fingers crossed.

Today's pic shows the snow-covered north-western fells near Cockermouth. Very pretty but I'm glad I don't have to do my gardening up there.

almost ready

Although the soil is cold it is not actually frozen so I’ve been digging out more compost from the heap and applying it throughout the garden. As a companion all afternoon I had a robin who was either pecking in the heap or among the freshly spread compost. Disturbed ground means lovely creepy-crawlies for dinner.

The ivy you can see in the pic is invading from a neighbour's garden. Some people might think it looks very rustic to have ivy creeping over hedges and fences but I hate the darned stuff. It's just about the most pernicious weed imaginable and very difficult to get rid of. We used to have some trying to get a foothold on the front of the house and the only way I could get rid was by burning it off with a blowlamp.

The main veg plot is now just about ready for this year’s crops. All I really need to do is a final rake over when it dries out and then apply a dressing of BFB with pelleted chicken manure for the brassicas.

In addition to the compost from the heap I also added crushed dried seaweed and will, of course, be giving the crops my liquid seaweed feed throughout the season. So, that's most of the preparation done now all I can do is wait for spring!

A couple of weeks ago I sprouted some out-of-date pea seeds in the kitchen, intending to use them in a stir fry. Well, I didn't use them and they kept growing so I've transplanted the clump to a pot of compost. Wonder if I'll get an extra early crop of peas this year?

early peas?

muckspreading

Well, it's compost really and not manure. Today I scraped the top off the main compost heap and dug out 12 buckets full of stuff to spread on part of the plot.

As you can see there's a bit of unrotted woody material in there but once it's been spread this is easy to rake off and then put back in the heap to further rot down.

The compost I dug out was roughly raked over two of the beds to let the worms pull it down. Brassicas will be going in one side and the other will probably be 'square footed'. You can see that there's still a few of last year's crops in the higher beds and if we can't eat the stuff fresh before the ground is needed I'll just freeze it.

The leeks are not as good as previous years but I put this down to getting them in late because the poor summer meant that the potatoes were lifted later.

rhubarb rears its head

On my rounds of the garden this morning I noticed that the first shoots of rhubarb are now poking their heads above the mulch. This is earlier than the last few years but I guess that’s down to the mild winter so far.

I might have ago at forcing one of the plants this year to give an early crop but the disadvantage of doing this is that it weakens the plant and is likely to give a lower yield the following year. Am I that desperate for rhubarb?

In my efforts at compost self-sufficiency I've been hoarding sacks of stuff all last year in addition to the daleks and the open heap. When I tipped out one of the sacks of mulch material to see what condition it was in I was pleasantly surprised.

As you can see, it looks rather like shop-bought compost although it has some biggish woody bits that haven’t rotted down yet. This lot was made from shredded prunings, etc. mixed with grass mowings and a scatter of chicken manure pellets every three or four inches as the sack filled up. As a mulch round fruit trees and bushes it certainly helps to keep weeds down and must add something to the soil structure....and it's free!

I'll finish this post with a pic of tonight's sunset taken from the back garden. It's a great shame that so few people, because of work, etc. rarely see anything like this.