Success & Successional Sowings

I promised to keep you posted on our new Salad Bar, in terms of my non-ability to 'sow successionally', and so here it is kids? Top left, you'll see my experiment with some bought-in carrot seedlings, which I've invidually transplanted like a 5 dice pattern, to see if it alerted The Carrot Root Fly at all. I must just explain, I worded that wrongly, it isn't the 5 dice pattern that attracts the fly?! (DOH!) Which is basically, Wellie flying by the seat of her pants yet again, but in a good cause for future reference. I've already got a trough of Amsterdam Forcing 'finger carrots' growing in the Dutch Greenhouse, up on staging, which is hardly ever disturbed, so as definitely NOT to attract the fly..... so I want to find out, if the salad bar 'Parmex' round carrots will be a success or a failure. and whether they like growing in only about 6 inches of compost at all! If you click on the picture above, it should hopefully enlarge it sufficiently enough for you to scrutinise what's happening there, and actually, I'm not doing at all badly so far with my 'successional sowing'. I'm sure there's room for improvement, but largely, I've been sowing more seed once the last batch has germinated, and that's a megga improvement on what I was doing previously, I can assure you!

The Corn Salad, Radish & Pea Shoots haven't germinated at all well, proving that the seed is way too old now, and needs to be binned. The red Cos seedlings (just out of view) have germinated brilliantly in a short time (new seed this year). And some of the Lettuce seed that Piggie gave me on our Easter After Brekkie Board Meeting, depending how well they do, may just be contenders for my local produce show entry on the 'One Head of Lettuce'. But we'll see what's ready that week!!
(I'm desperately trying not to let my Show Coach: Paulottie down?! "Keep Sowing Wellie, Keep Sowing Luv!")
So much so, that Trousers hasn't even had a whiff of a Vicky Spongecake yet. HaHaHa!

Having grown my first ever Nectarine last year to the stunning size of my little fingernail, before it unceremoniously dropped off (the fruit, not my fingernail), I'm definitely bringing better news to you at the minute? Just look at these babies, aren't they lovely? and there's a whole load more besides? (See Wellie jump up and down for joy at her ability to hand-pollinate for a change.....X) But. With a definite Full Stop. I am not counting my chickens, as it were, until such time as I harvest any of them.


And Wellie's attempt at hand-pollinating The Peaches has also come to some fruition, so we'll gloss over that one as well, until such time as we're getting closer to a Megan advert on the telly, shall we?!

Next up, are my little furry friends, who think their Wellie is incredibly mean to have put those lovely tasty fruit and vegetables in her own garden, and not in ours? "You see that Bored Bean Snowflake? That's got my name written all over it..."..... "No it hasn't Chocolate Chops, it's mine - and I'm in love with it....?."

And here we are then, the first barbeque of 2010, but a good excuse also to show you that I'm making every available space available to me for Growing My Own. Like my Strawberries, and Salad, I prefer to just pick Parsley, not faff around with it, washing and drying it before I do anything with it.... so grow it in a container or two, a windowbox - anything. That way, it isn't spattered with soil after a heavy downpour, and you can just harvest clean handfuls whenever you need to, and just chuck it in the salad, or whatever..... Simples.

With Trousers, Jim (Best Friend In The World) and Harry having gone Detecting 'Over't'Bridge' yesterday, it was really lovely to have my man at home for a whole day to myself today, which was a rare treat for me and The Cat.

Trousers and I had a lie in, which we kind of never do... (now don't go making your own story up Children), and the cat didn't get up till mid-afternoon - completely missing the farm cat that snuck into the kitchen to eat her food about 5am, getting trapped into a corner and upending the entire contents of the precious Oil & Vinegar supplies in a glassy mess all over the kitchen floor.

Happy Sunday Peeps!

Ooh! and Welcome to our newest lovely blog follower.X

Have a lovely week, and see you all next time.X