My Veggie Garden

[Pandabean]

Took these shots this morning before heading off for work.
The garden is coming along nicely, I do wish I had taken photos before I did all the work. Prior to this the patches had no wooden borders and were hard to maintain, hopefully with this setup it will be easier to work with and make crop rotation much easier.

Each of the beds are approximately 4m x 2m with 4 small beds at the ends.
The two in the patch nearest the house contain a variety of herbs, not sure if I have planted them all in the right spot but bed 1 has a mix of rosemary, sage, corriander, chives, thyme and marigolds.
The next one contains marjoram, oregano, chamomile and a poorly parsley plant. I still have space for a large plant but not sure what to put in there. I'm open to ideas.

At the front of the image is the roots bed with alternating rows of parsnip, onion, leek and carrot with some lettuce in there as well.
I have noticed that the onions all have yellow tips, is this a sign of any problems?
The second bed from the front contains the main crop potatoes (forgotten what kind) but they are coming along nicely.

The third bed from the front contains 4 rows of peas and 2 wigwams of beans (runner I think), these are taking their time but have grown well in the past few weeks with all the rain we have had.
Finally the last main bed is the brassicas, which I admit I am probably late in putting a net over them but that will be done this weekend hopefully. Some of them are not doing too well, out of 6 brussels sprouts plants only 1 has done ok. I have a few that I planted a few weeks back in a pot that I will try and transplant but it is probably too late in the season now.

Then there are the strawberries at the back. Instead of applying netting over the fruit cage I have instead opted for a slightly different approach.......mainly because the nets were too short to go over the cage .

I will try and post some more pictures up later with plenty of questions I am sure.

 

[mick91]

Yellow tips of onion leaves can be a sign of a few things. There could be a kind of fungal infection, or last year I had the same trouble and some kind of worm had eaten away at the bulb

 

[tommy the cat]

Lovely work fella.
Regarding nets I took advice and bought scaffold netting off eBay. .. pretty cheap and youcan get it in different widths.... go fo bigger than you think just remember some plants need the bees to get in to pollinate....d

 

[Pandabean]

Thanks.

I have just bought some from Amazon marketplace. Hopefully it was a decent price, 3m x 20m should be more than enough....hopefully .
What veggies need bees? The trouble is all my brassicas are in the one plot and I was going to run a net from one end to the other.

Lovely work fella.
Regarding nets I took advice and bought scaffold netting off eBay. .. pretty cheap and youcan get it in different widths.... go fo bigger than you think just remember some plants need the bees to get in to pollinate....d

 

[tommy the cat]

More your fruit really... was thinking of your strawberries ..

 

[Pandabean]

Ahh. The net I have for the strawberries is wide enough for bees. That I can confirm after watching one go in and out when I was putting them up.

 

[Pandabean]

Well, I managed to get the netting up over the weekend for the brassica plants. Not sure if it was too late as I did spot some yellow eggs underneath my brussels sprouts which were removed.
The scaffold netting I got has larger holes in it along the black lines, not sure if this will be a problem.

My main herb beds are doing well, even though the chamomile is sprawling its spindly stems across most of the plot. Hopefully the thyme plants will spread out a bit more and the rosemary grows up a bit.
I noticed that some of the leaves on my Calabrese are discoloured. I am guessing this is a result of a deficiency of some sort. Although it is the only one showing the first head.
Unfortunately my peas are not as big as I hoped they would be at this time of year, maybe it is just down to the weather. Someone else I spoke to up here was having similar troubles.

 

[British Red]

The holes in the black area are fine. Do remove all those eggs though and inspect regularly for caterpillars as the eggs look like cabbage white butterfly eggs. Those caterpillars will destroy your brassicas!



small white caterpillar by British Red, on Flickr

 

[richardhomer]

Looks great mate.
You will really enjoy eating the veg you have grown

 

[milius2]

Yep, it's great veggie garden, mine is only one bed this year How about some compost piles? Are they coming up? You going to need some nice compost to keep it sound

 

[Pandabean]

I have grown veg over the past few years but this year I am making a proper effort. Already got plans in my head for vertical gardening, a poly tunnel and possibly chickens at some point in the future.

I have one active compost pile, the second bin is still waiting to be filled. They are just on the other side of the greenhouse.
Not sure when I should stop filling the first one and let it just do it's thing. I have never been able to get it to heat up even though I am thinking I am adding the right material. Probably not the right amounts though. I was gifted some horse manure at the weekend and put that in with shredded paper/cardboard so I will see how that works

The bins are old, and made from wood which is getting a little bit rotten now. So I may need to rebuild them in the near future.

The compost bin you see in the first picture was a freebie and I have only put leaves in it at the moment. Not got enough material for it.

The plan this year is to gather up bags and bags of leaves to make lovely leaf mold to put around the plants.

At the side of my house I have a narrow (~2ft) and very long bit of soil running up the entire driveway. It does have a hedge on the other side and part of it is shaded by the house for most of the day except in mid-summer. Does anyone have any ideas what to plant along this strip that can produce anything without being too invasive and causing problems?

 

[Pandabean]

Well seems a few things have come along since I posted the above photos. However the peas and beans are still struggling away for some reason.
The rest of the veg is doing well. Only had 1 onion try to bolt so far.
Carrots are doing fine and even the parsnip seeds I got from Hugh are coming along well. I planted some extra in June which may be a bit late in the year but I plan to grow them for seed.

I thought I would do a video of the garden, I have never done a youtube Vlog before so this is all new to me. I did it mainly to document my progress through video rather than just photos.

I do have another video I took at the weekend which I will get uploaded soon.

[video=youtube;2HPKfFGIUWk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HPKfFGIUWk[/video]

 

[bigbear]

FWIW I would not worry about temperature etc with compost beds, fill em up, leave em alone. You will get great compost.
Its easy to over think the simple stuff, left alone nature will sort it out !

 

[Pandabean]

I was just surprised that it heated up for the first time in five years.....must have added the right amount of materials for a change.
I know what you mean about over thinking it, some books do go into exact thicknesses and ratios of greens and browns. I am just happy to have compost ready for digging in this autumn.

I am planning to put in a couple of small cold frames and give growing over winter a go. Anyone got any tips on that?

 

[British Red]

You seem to have a decent greenhouse. If you plant some seed potatoes in sacks inside the greenhouse you can have fresh potatoes for your Christmas dinner.

 

[Pandabean]

I haven't got anything in the greenhouse now. Most of my focus has been outside this year, but I do plan to make more use of it next year with tomatoes at least being grown.

What sort of seed potatoes would you recommend Hugh? I would imagine any of the garden stores/nurseries around here are all out of seed potatoes now.

 

[British Red]

You will certainly find some in garden centres, but if not shoot me a PM and Ill sort you out some of mine. Try Maris Peer as a variety. 4" Of compost in an old sack with a few holes in the bottom, one seed spud, then another 4". When there's a got 12" of growth, earth up by 6". Then just water till harvest.

 

[Pandabean]

Thanks, I will have a look up here at the weekend and see if anyone has them.
I noticed on on of the UK seed sites they were already out of stock.

I was watching a youtube video and the person was putting multiple seed potatoes in 2 - 3 layers interspersed with compost. Would that yield much more?

I was wondering if it would be better to try and grow some winter veg in the greenhouse or just get going with making the cold frames. Would you be able to suggest anything that could be planted over the winter?

 

[British Red]

Plenty of stuff will grow in the Winter, but cold frames are of minimal help. Now if you have some extra wood, build a hot frame. They are amazing. Or get a plastic composted from the council and put it in the greenhouse filled with hot rotting material.

 

[george47]

I thought I would do a video of the garden, I have never done a youtube Vlog before so this is all new to me. I did it mainly to document my progress through video rather than just photos.

[video=youtube;2HPKfFGIUWk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HPKfFGIUWk[/video]

Panda, I am new here and must say your garden is beautiful. I make bad videos but am learning the main thing is to keep them to 2 minutes tops. Even then they get too long - or it seems as I have gone back to my old ones. No one told me - they just did not watch them much.

I have to get going on the weedy mess I have let develop when my string trimmer quit after being left in the rain a couple weeks. I did a couple half hearted rebuilds and they were unsuccessful and today my $4 carb rebuild kit arrived. This is it when neat - but it is my terraces and edges that have run amouck - I need some good weed spraying to get it back.