The Homestead Garden week to week

[Quixoticgeek]

How on earth do you fit all that in? 12 trees in 8 x 3m???? We need pictures

The answer is dwarfing rootstocks. 7 of the 12 trees are in containers, 5 are in the ground as a mini cordon.

I have a range of rootstocks from M26, M27, M9, and even an M111.

The containers I use include: 3 18" half barrels, 2 18" square MYOG wooden planters, and a selection of 18" and 15" terracotta pots.

I don't have a big garden, so I have to try to get as much as I can out of it. The raised bed I divide into 4 4'x4' breaks. Which I then use as Potatoes, Beans, Brassicas, Roots. Last year the bean break got me 5lb of green beans, 1.5kg of pumpkin, and ½lb of dried beans. Not oodles, but when you consider the size of the bed... I am still eating my way through the green beans in the freezer.

This yeah I am hoping to expand a bit on this with the judicious use of extra containers and some grow bags. I'm never going to be self sufficient off such a small garden, but with the stuff I forage from the wild, it certainly helps to make up a useful chunk of my diet.

J

 

[British Red]

...it also means you develop skills and understanding of growing that serves you well!

If you need any seeds from what you see in my garden, say the word! Would love to see a picture of such space efficiency

 

[Quixoticgeek]

Will grab some photos this weekend once I've removed some of the weeds.

J

 

[British Red]

I spent more than four hours weeding today - its that time of year

 

[bigbear]

Red, as a keen maker of home done baked beans and a new allotment owner I will be fascinated to see which variety is best. I just did a batch of white kidney beans from my local Asian store and they were good, and made a very authentic cassoulet.

 

[British Red]

Its fun to try these things "side by side". We are trying two new open pollinated carrots this year as well - we have become a it complacent with Nantes so decided to try some others.

I will seed save any of the beans that are a success and offer them to the gardeners here. Theres a few growing my "Wizard Field Bean" and "Trail of Tears" now

 

[RE8ELD0G]

We have roughly 10x10m of allotment area at the top of our garden.
We only moved in last year and have just got round to starting the clear up before planting.
As you can see there is a lot of work to be done.
There is a big patch of Rhubarb already growing and the garden is dotted with mint and other herbs
and what is either garlic or onions.??

But im hoping for some apple and cherry trees
A few veg patches
A strawberry patch
and a herb garden.








And i have been lucky enough to acquire a nice big greenhouse for FREE, its going to go where the rug is currently covering a big weed bed.
Just need some hardcore and concrete for its base.

 

[Toddy]

Tommy the Cat; sorry I missed the bit about green manure.
I've tried alfalfa....long stringy roots and stems that seemed to snag my fork for the next two years
I tried the chopped down comfrey (not the flower heads) and that seemed to work, but it disappeared into nothing in a hurry.
I tried the mustard seed mix and that was a right royal pain, the seeds germinated for years afterwards.
We tried the peas, and they became mouldy and grey and very unhealthy looking.
In the end we grew spuds That seemed to work really well at breaking up the clay, and introducing organics into the soil. Mostly because HWMBLT dug it over and then lightly dug in stable straw and let the worms work that in over Winter, then planted spuds in the Spring. We weren't sure how they'd do in such relatively 'fresh' manured soil, but they did fine. The happing up helped work the soil too, and then digging them up again gave everything a right good mixing yet again.

I live too close to my neighbours to get away with using manure, even the chicken pellets had them complaining about the smell. So these days I stick to the stuff from the compost heaps with masses of leaf litter when it's coming down or available. I do augment the compost bins with stuff like straw though, and if I can get stable straw, so much the better

Not ideal, but our gardens are wrapped around the gable of a block of three, and the long gable side is agin a woodland so inclined to be shady. I did try the four deep beds four foot wide along the side but in the end, it's much easier me just using pots and shifting stuff around.
It's surprising just how much, and what variety we manage doing it this way.
If I could decimate the slug and snail population though, I'd be an awful lot happier.
That said; there's a thrush building a nest in the ivy behind the pond

atb,
M

 

[British Red]

Loads of potential there chap - makes my fingers itch

Give us a closeup of your mystery onion and I can tell you what it is - alliums are my thing!

 

[RE8ELD0G]

I dont know anything about gardening really, just some bits and pieces i remembered from childhood and my mum in the garden.
I was in the process of hoeing the weeds and other misc plants when i could suddenly smell onion.
These are what smell, they look to me to be spring onions or maybe some sort of garlic/chive?????
If they are edible, how can i go about moving them to somewhere else without killing them.?


Also can anyone tell me what this plant is?
Its growing all over the place in big patches.

 

[British Red]

Interesting - are the leaves of the allium (onion thing) truly flat as they appear or more of flatened tube?

 

[British Red]

Oh the other plant looks like an umbellifer to me - possibly cow parsley - aka a weed

 

[RE8ELD0G]

They are tube at the bottom and open up flat at the top, just like spring onions.

 

[British Red]

Hmmmm I'm a little stumped and that's unusual with alliums.

Most "true" onions have tubular leaves - some are flattened tubes but mostly all hollow. Chives are hollow. Welsh onion are hollow.

Flat alliums include garlic - but the bulbs look wrong, ramson but they don't form a stalk,

I think they may be a form of wild onion - drummonds look right other than the bulb colour

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/239533/

Some of the ornamental alliums have flat leaves, but none I know look quite like that.

Sorry - thought I would peg it right off

 

[RE8ELD0G]

well, what i will do is move them to the freshly dug area and let them grow.
I will report back when they are a little bigger or if they change in any way.

Thanks for your help.

 

[tommy the cat]

Thanks for that Toddy

 

[bernie66]

Could they be welsh onions, possibly red welsh onions? They look quite similar to me. (I am NO expert though)

 

[northumbrian]

can you get red welsh onions ? ive got the green ones and they are extremely hardy , they come back up every spring and all you have to do is devide the clumps every 3 years or so ! ps any links to red welsh onion seed will be great thank you.

 

[British Red]

Welsh onions have round hollow leaves not flat like them - so not a Welsh onion. I do Welsh onion seed - but I've never seen a red one

 

[HillBill]

A young red leek perhaps? They have flat leaves.