This is the journal of my endeavours to grow a range of fruit, veg and flowers from seed, grow organically, and my attempts to create a personal paradise with 1/2 acre of maintained gardens and 1/2 acre wild meadows. Northern Ireland's average daily high temperatures are 18 °C (64 °F) in July and 6 °C (43 °F) in January. Soil type: Clay

Sunday 3 April 2011

DIY Veg Box

The cat looks quite content with this veg box so I'll pretend she built it.

This is a very bad weed infested area of the garden that I want to grow more veg in so at the moment I've got some plastic down and it's a bit of an eye sore. I'm hoping I can pretty it up this summer & control the weeds. I can visualise what I want it to look like, fingers crossed I get there.

Sowing lots of seed at the minute. My first seed sown in late Feb were peppers and chillis. Then flowers and this weekend various veg seed. Date and type of seeds I've sown can be viewed from my '2011 Seed List' page tab located towards the top of the blog.

In the green tray (left) Calendula 'Orange King' are coming up nicely. The flowers are edible and the bright orange flower petals will be nice scattered in salad this summer.
Left: Two chillis and a pepper plant got a slightly more permanent home .
The Maris Peer potatoes were planted in the ground this weekend (I was watching Monty on BBC Gardener's World plant his potatoes & I remembered mine were still in the garage). I almost put them in tubs or large compost bags to grow but had some ground ready so this way I'll get a higher yield (based on last year's test).

Remember my 'Name that Veg' blog post (27 March)? Well seems my fellow bloggers were right about it being a radish. But it looks long and red rather than round.  Suppose I need to pull one out soon and have a look. There are only about 8 of them that survived the winter and most are quite small.

Digging Dilemma (blog 31 March) - good news... I took the digging fork back to the garden centre and they gladly gave me a refund. After my wheelbarrow, my digging fork is my favourite garden tool so content I have a new one. Fingers crossed I chose a better one this time!

8 comments:

  1. Re the refund for the broken fork; did you use it to buy a different type of fork from the same place, or did you just take the money and go somewhere else?
    What type are the spuds? They look like blues of some sort.

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  2. Hi Mark, the garden centre only had two forks to choose from and I wasn't keen on the other one they had so I took the money and went elsewhere. The spuds are Maris Peer, I treat them like main crop.

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  3. If your radishes are 'French Breakfast' they will be long instead of round. Looks like you have a good 'supervisor' in the garden. You have some very pretty seedlings.

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  4. Glad you got a new fork. Your starts looking quite successful.

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  5. You built a nice looking veg box, Kitty Cat. Did Kelli help any at all?
    You are getting a lot done for your garden..the starts look really good.

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  6. I think your box is looking grand! I'm also glad to read that your broken gardening fork was refunded and I hope you ended up with a better one :) I'm looking forward to reading about how your veggie garden grows, I have so much to learn! Cheers, Jenni

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  7. Great looking raised bed I think kitty wants one as well. Those seedlings look healthy we have to we grow potatoes in the winter to spring.

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  8. My youngest son go crazy looking at your cat. Don't want me to scroll down and read. Glad that you got your refund!

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