Carrots should be orange!

Posted on March 25, 2012 | 1 comment

We have quite stoney ground so I have always grown carrots in a variety of deep pots. Today I planted my first batch of main crop carrots.

My method

Old square flower pots are ideal for carrots

I use these square-ish flower containers as they are deep enough for the carrots to grow and it can be moved around the garden.

I put crocs (bits of broken china, bricks and stones) in the bottom for drainage, fill with multi-purpose compost (or some of my own when it’s ready), add a thin layer of seed compost, water, sprinkle the carrot seeds over the surface then cover with a thin layer of seed compost.

 

I will keep them in the greenhouse until there is no more risk of frost and then I sit the pot up on blocks in a sunny spot in the garden.

I have always just sprinkled the seeds on top of watered compost and let them grow. You are supposed to thin them out but I have never bothered – just don’t sow too many seeds and they will all have plenty of room.

It is also suggested that you sow seeds every 2-3 weeks to provide a continual supply but I have found that as long as they are in the soil they will last for months. There is nothing better than nipping down to the bottom of the garden and pulling some carrots to have with dinner. I will probably plant another pot in 6-8 weeks and that should see me through to autumn.

Purple Haze and Autumn King 2

Last year I grew Purple Haze and Autumn King 2. I mixed the seeds and planted them together so it was always a surprise which colour came out of the pot. It is a good mixture and they look great on the plate.

I still have seeds for both varieties and will continue planting them until I run out.

Now I know that carrots were originally purple and it was the Dutch that changed the colour to orange.  I admire Jamie Oliver for trying to bring back traditional varieties of vegetables, in this case Purple Haze carrots. However, purple carrots MESS WITH MY HEAD and I’m not sure I will grow any more once the seeds have finished.

They look like carrots and taste like carrots but they are purple. Sometimes you just want some nice orange carroty loveliness covered in butter without confusing your brain. Life is too short and the novelty has definitely worn off.

Early Carrots

Early carrots planted in a rose container

This year I read that to get an early crop of carrots use a deep pot, such as a rose container, and bring seeds on in the greenhouse. Here are some I planted on 18 February.  I will let you know if they are ready to eat any earlier than the main crops planted today.

Interesting fact about carrots

If you are planning to grow carrots, keep them at least 18 inches above the ground. The reason? Apparently carrot root fly grubs cannot fly!

 

Keep them well watered during dry spells as this stops the roots from splitting.

Wait until the carrots are in the kitchen before tearing the tops off. The smell of bruised foliage attracts carrot fly.

To store them over winter, any soil should be removed and they should be kept in sand in a cool dark place.

 

1 Comment

Posted in Vegetables

Tagged , , ,

Mr Mac’s cunning plan

Posted on March 22, 2012 | 1 comment

Well what an amazing day. I have been in the garden all day with a t-shirt and sunnies on and actually felt the need to put sun cream on my face! At midday it was 17 degrees outside the greenhouse and 25 degrees inside – and it’s only 22 March. It was just me, woody woodpecker, two ladybirds and the pheasant who has set up home in the field next door while he looks for a girlfriend! Heaven.

The trellis and flower bed where I plan to grow a wall of blue flowers.

I have weeded the flower bed in front of the trellis, potted on the cosmos, osteospermums (all 2 of them!), the gazanias and the dahlia pom poms. I also planted some ladybird poppy seeds in pots. It is something I did last year and it was really effective.

The First Tulips

The best part of the day was seeing the first of the tulips open.

Until this year, all we had in the garden in the spring were snowdrops then daffodils. This year we introduced some crocus. A bag of 20 bulbs was purchased and planted but the 2 small circles of purple crocus was merely a drop in the ocean and hardly made an impact at all. I think we probably need 2,000 bulbs!

We also bought loads of tulip bulbs but never got round to planting them in the ground in time. So we decided to plant them all in pots and once they have flowered and died back, we’ll stick them in the ground for next spring.

An  issue we have had in the past is our pots always crack and break with the frost. We did not want to risk it this winter, especially as most of them had tulip bulbs inside them.

Mr Mac came up with a cunning plan! The reason the pots crack is because the soil gets waterlogged and then expands when it freezes and this cracks the pot. His theory was that if he could create a layer between the pot and the soil inside it that would allow expansion then the pots would not crack.

Can you guess what Mr Mac’s solution was? BUBBLE WRAP!

Bubble wrap between the pot and the soil

Yes, we lined each pot with a layer of bubble wrap then filled it up with soil and planted the bulbs.

This did the trick and all the tulip pots survived the winter intact.

The only pot that did crack is the one that I keep my blueberry bush in. It sits in a large saucer which retains water. Yes, you guessed it – the saucer filled with water, the water froze and cracked the pot! Typical.

Anyway, the bubble wrap design is patent pending and you can look forward to seeing Mr Mac on the next series of Dragon’s Den!

 

1 Comment

Posted in Hints and tips

Tagged , , , , ,

The first cut of 2012!

Posted on March 21, 2012 | 4 comments

Well today saw the grass get it’s first cut of 2012. Mr Mac had been trying to put it off for as long as possible. One reason was that we had some serious moss treatment done at the end of last year and wanted to give the grass a chance to grow. However, the main reason the grass had not been cut before now is that after the gale force winds in December and then January the grass was littered with broken twigs and branches and it was my job to pick them up!

Job now done. Back now very sore. Grass cut and looking good I have to say.

If we ever need to buy anything from the garden centre we try to do it on a Wednesday. The reason for this? Dougal’s Discount Wednesday – 10% off all purchases.

Off we went with a list and back we came with more seed compost, seeds for my hanging baskets and maris piper seed potatoes.

I had forgotten about my hanging baskets and have not actually planted anything appropriate. So after a quick look at some seed catalogues I decided on Monopsis, Nicotiana and Trailing Petunia. What I actually bought was pale pink Dascia and fuschia pink Trailing Petunia. The baskets will hang along the “blue wall” I hope to create so hopefully will provide a lovely contrast.

I also decided to pot on my 6 courgette plants. They had been getting quite comfy in the house but 2 of them were starting to keel over! They have now been rehomed and relocated to the greenhouse. I just hope they are still upright in the morning.

Check the size of the tuber on this!

 

 

Mr Mac decided to relocate a peony rose which was impeding progress of his new path network. Check the size of the tuber!

 

 

 

4 Comments

Posted in General

Tagged , , , , ,

Tea break – lemon and cardamom cookies

Posted on March 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

I am a firm believer in tea breaks and was inspired last night by The Hairy Bikers, of all people, to make these lemon and cardamom cookies. They are really easy.

Ingredients

  • 115g butter, softened
  • 75g caster sugar
  • 1/2 lemon – zest only
  • 125g plain flour
  • 50g ground almonds
  • 3tsp ground cardamom or 1 heaped tsp cardamom seeds, ground in a pestle and mortar

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 190C/375F/Gas5. Line a large baking tray with baking paper.
  2. Beat the butter, sugar and lemon zest together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy.
  3. Beat in the flour, almonds and cardamom until the mixture is well combined and comes together to form a stiff dough.
  4. Split the dough into 12 equal pieces, roll into balls and place on baking tray.
  5. Press each cookie down with the bottom of a glass to flatten – you can make patterns if you are artistic (unlike me).
  6. Bake for 12-14 minutes until pale golden brown.
  7. Leave to cool then transfer to a wire rack. They will crisp up as they cool.
  8. The recipe does go on to say store the cookies in an airtight tin and eat within 7 days – not a problem in this house!!!!!!!!
Lemon and cardamom cookies

Lemon and cardamom cookies - might need to use a larger tray next time!

Leave a comment

Posted in Recipes

Tagged , , ,

Where has my Muscari gone?

Posted on March 20, 2012 | 1 comment

I popped into town this morning to buy a paper. I also did my good deed for the day and donated leftover balls of wool to the Cat Rescue Appeal – apparently so volunteers can knit blankets for the abandonned kittens – awwwwww.

Anyway, on my way home I was stopped at the traffic lights at the canal bridge. I don’t mind this as there is a house there which always has a great garden. Whoever it belongs to is always one step ahead of mother nature. The snowdrops have been and gone, crocus are in the death throes, daffodils and tulips have been out for ages.

I was having a good old nosey while waiting for the lights to change when I noticed something new – Muscari! I thought to myself, ” I planted some of that. Where on earth is it?”

MuscariAs soon as I got home I looked out the label. Beautiful blue flowers. Something to give the garden a bit of colour while it is waiting for everything else to come out of hibernation. A bit of blue contrast to all the yellow daffs. Good for wildlife too, apparently. Look great alongside early tulips according to the label. YES BUT WHERE ARE THEY??????????

According to the instructions, flowering time is March to April. Not the end of the world, there is still time. I checked my garden log and they were planted on 16 January – slightly later than the recommended September to December planting time but barely over a fortnight. How come “Mr. House at the Canal Bridge” is so far ahead again?

According to the label there were 50 bulbs. Now I have a confession to make. I have been round the garden looking for signs of life and I cannot actually remember where I planted them!

So I will keep waiting and looking and if they ever appear you will be the first to know. And from now on I am going to use my marker labels religiously so that this never happens again.

Tomorrow I might walk into town so I can have a proper look at “Mr. House at the Canal Bridge’s” muscari………

1 Comment

Posted in Flowers

Welcome to Compostopolis!

Posted on March 19, 2012 | 2 comments

What a fantastic weekend. Two days of glorious, warm sunshine. It made me smile!

This year, Mr Mac and I have a long list of jobs to do in the garden other than growing things. The problem is one job needs to be done before the next one can be started. The time had come, we could put it off no longer – the compost bins had to be moved!

How NOT to build a compost bin!

old compost bins

How not to build a compost bin

When we moved here almost 4 years ago, Mr Mac built 3 huge composting bins at the bottom of the garden. One bin had to be demolished last year to make way for the new greenhouse and the remaining 2 were just in the wrong place.

As you can see from the photo they were huge and we could get loads of stuff in them.  However, size is not everything! To make compost successfully it needs to be turned. This is done by mixing it up to allow the air to get in. Our bins were too high to be able to do this.

We did eventually get lovely compost but it took nearly 2 years while we waited for the waste to break down.

How to do it properly

The error of our way was made clear one Friday evening courtesy of Monty Don on Gardeners World. He showed (or showed off according to an envious Mr Mac) viewers his composting “bays”. Simple compartments open at one end to allow waste to be wheelbarrowed in, tipped and left to break down.

The walls of each compartment were low enough to allow the compost to be turned by moving it from one bay to the next. A few weeks later it can be moved back. The most recent waste on top is then at the bottom and plenty of air is introduced which then speeds up the process.

This system should provide useable compost in as little as 3 months – a substantial improvement on 2 years!

New compost baysHere is the result using some old corrugated seets and some fence posts.

The end bay will hold the compost that is ready to use and the other two will be used to alternate the compost that is breaking down. The walls are low enough to allow the composting waste to be lifted over with a fork into the next bay, introducing lots of air in the process.

So what do we compost?

To make good compost we use lots of different material. Fine waste such as grass clippings, coarse waste such as potato peelings, dry waste such as cardboard (Mr Mac highly recommends empty beer boxes for this!)  and wet waste such as other garden waste. We keep one of the small plastic composting bins you buy in the supermarket under the kitchen sink and fill it with veg peelings, tea bags, coffee grinds and egg shells.

A balanced mix provides the right amount of air and moisture to allow the bacteria to heat up and break down the waste. Worms also help – hence the reason Mr Mac has banned me from adding citrus peel – the worms don’t like it apparently!

And finally……

After a hard day in the garden I sat down to read the Sunday paper. I came across an article about an award-winning composting shed which is set to become the star of this year’s Scotland’s Garden’s Scheme (www.scotlandsgardens.org). Feeling quite smug about our newly constructed compost bays, I read on to see what the fuss was about.

The garden’s owner had commissioned a firm of architects to build the £22,000, 7ft shed made of curved weathered steel and with a wildflower meadow roof.

Our composting bays probably did not even cost £2 – and that was the cost of the biscuits we ate while having our tea break!

2 Comments

Posted in General

Tagged ,

Hello world!

Posted on March 16, 2012 | 1 comment

Welcome to my first blog.

I must start with a confession! I had intended to start this over a month ago to coincide with start of the growing year.  So I will need to provide a quick summary of where I’ve got to so far.

On the hard landscaping side,  last year we rescued an old conservatory from a house in Edinburgh that was being refurbished. It has been rebuilt at the bottom of the garden to provide a third greenhouse area. Mr Mac has provided me with two raised beds, shelving and a potting bench. It looks so good it has inspired him to build more paths and walls to link all the growing areas in the garden.

The other two greenhouses have been bleached and fumigated and are raring to be put into action.

Flower seeds planted so far- sweet peas, livingstone daisies (see banner for last year’s flowers), cosmos, osteospermum, rudbeckia, verbena, coreopsis, gazania, dahlia pom pom, silver dust, marigolds, lavender, snapdragons, morning glory, aster, iceland poppies, sunflower waooh! (grown in pots) and helichrysum.

Veg seeds planted so far – carrots, chilli (bird’s eye, razzamatazz and hotscotch), tomatoes, melon, peas, aubergine, red cabbage, brussel sprouts, brocolli, okra, aubergine, courgette, sweet basil, lemon basil, leeks, lettuce and early potatoes.

Disasters so far – 1! A friend gave us a heated propogator so we could bring on some early tomatoes and chillies. I cooked them! Second attempt is better with the first chilli seed germinating just this morning- wey hey!

I am trying lots of new flowers and veg this year, in particular, aubergine and okra. I am also going to try an area filled purely with cut flowers. I also have plans for a “blue wall”. Last year we replaced the old snow damaged fencing with a trellis and pergola and this year I have planted blue morning glory seeds and blue sweet peas, both vigorous climbers, which will hopefully cover both with gorgeous blue flowers.

Anyway, Mr Mac is calling for my assistance in upgrading one of the veg beds so best go and help!

Enjoy the sunshine!

   greenhouse ready for action!

This old conservatory was being thrown in a skip. All we had to do was build a supporting wall at the bottom of the garden to sit it on.

1 Comment

Posted in General