Now we're motoring...

A busy Sunday was had in the suburban veg plot. More spring cabbage was harvested - I think they're starting to go to seed so we may be eating cabbage rather a lot over the next few weeks. A few more radishes were uprooted and new seed sown in their place.

Excitement abound as the purple podded peas (Lancashire Lad) are seen to have shot up to 6 foot and are now in flower - in beautiful colours! So hopefully the cabbage dinners will shortly be making way for purple mange tout.

I've been hardening off plants over the last few weeks so took the plunge and planted out 2 summer purple sprouting broccoli, a Floridor courgette and an outdoor melon. With a few pieces of strategically placed fleece and one or two plastic bottle cloches in place everything should be fine if the overnight temps suddenly drop again. I've still got Defender courgettes, butternut squash and pumpkin in the greenhouse in large pots, so they'll make the transition to outdoors over the next week or so. At that stage I'll actually be able to move around in my little greenhouse and reach the tomato plants rather than flinging water in their general direction.

The flowering broad beans (Aquadulce) are now waving little baby pods around and the spring-sown broadies (Express) are already showing their first leaves in the same plot as the peas.

I have learned a new way of dealing with slugs - my preferred method thus far has been to scoop them up on a trowel and then catapult them at speed towards the laurel hedge at the bottom of the garden. Although it gave me great satisfaction to hear the little muffled thud as they hit the tree trunks, it was pointed out to me that given that they're made mainly of muscle, they were probably getting off with a bit of a headache before heading back towards my raised beds for another snack. So, with the aid of an upturned flower bucket, I'm now laying them out as fast as I find them as a snack for our friendly garden blackbird - who seems very pleased with the general arrangement.

Potato update 2009: The first bags of Mimi and Anya are almost filled up with soil with plenty of potato foliage (haulms, so I'm told) on top. Looking forward to the harvest in a couple of weeks!

The white stuff

Wow - I will never doubt a weather forecast again. Snow - lots of it - landed on my veg plot on Sunday night. I wasn't around during the week, so could only worry from a distance about what was happening to my broad beans and spring cabbages. I spent a good half an hour this morning checking out the situation and excavating the veg from beneath their snow blankets. They look a bit squashed but not too bad. They're so tough! The sun came out just as I took a photo of the garden scene - broad beans in the foreground beneath the fleece, cabbages behind them. Let's hope this weather doesn't continue - I want to get out there planting things!!

Welcome to 2009

A frosty morning awaited my first garden visit since before Christmas. My broad bean plants were looking less than perky but they are under horticultural fleece so I'm hoping that they'll be okay. The spring cabbages seemed okay but as the weather forecast this coming week could be as low as -3C overnight, I covered them in fleece also. Belt and braces, as my granddad used to say... Despite the weather, the onions (4 different varieties, including 1 red) seem fine with the frost and their green shoots are still growing strongly.

My inherited rhubarb patch is already  showing signs of new growth. It seems only last week that we pulled the last stalks! I've decided that 2009 is to be a year of garden experiments, so I've upturned a plastic dustbin over the patch to try out forced stems.