Penellype's 2016 Garden Diary

[Penellype]

Since people seem to have enjoyed reading my 2015 challenge thread I thought I would do another one with a slightly different angle. Rather than counting up the different varieties I thought I would concentrate more on what I am doing at the time, whether it is sowing and planting, pruning, harvesting, preparation etc. It won't be a daily diary - I will write something when I have something interesting to say, and try not to miss too much stuff out so that people get an idea of how much (or little) time and effort is involved.

It has taken me a little time to get going with this for several reasons - I've had one of these nasty cold viruses for the past month or so (much better now), the weather has been appalling and gardening nearly impossible, and I've been thinking what it might be interesting for me to do.

Where I am now.

At the start of the year I had the following available to harvest in the garden:
Carrots Nantes Frubund Fastcrop, Nantes 2 and Eskimo in pots
Brokali Endeavour 1 plant in a pot
Chinese celery in a pot
Leeks Albana and Oarsman in pots and a raised bed (still disappointingly small)
Cabbage Pixie 2 plants in a pot available as greens
A few spindly spring onion Ramrod
Mizuna Red Knight - baby leaves in a self watering pot
Namenia growing alongside the mizuna
Komatsuna Torasan in another self watering pot
Corn salad thinnings
1 red cabbage plant in a pot that failed to form a heart but is now producing a few new leaves
1 ripe alpine strawberry, which I ate on New Year's Day!

In the house:
Lettuce Valmaine and Winter Gem in the grow light garden
Some straggly mixed lettuce plants on the spare room windowsill still giving the odd leaf
Mibuna ditto
2 small ripe Snackbite Orange peppers on the landing windowsill
Pea shoots (Onward) in the grow light garden

At my friend's:
Leek Musselburgh - much bigger than mine due to being grown in the sun
A few spring onions
Carrots Autumn King and Nantes 2 currently waterlogged and rotting at the bottom
Calabrese Sakura still producing a few very small edible sideshoots
Beetroot boltardy (for my friend - I'm not keen) - I also have some in a pot at home, but it hasn't produced any proper roots and I will probably ditch it.
A couple of sluggy cabbages (Duncan)
Lettuce Valmaine (starting to bolt)
Pepper Snackbite Orange still ripening in the greenhouse
Tomato Shirley still ripening in the greenhouse (I picked the few remaining green ones yesterday due to the forecast).

Stored:
Potato Desiree, Sarpo Mira in paper bags in the garage
Onion Sturon stringed in the garage
2 freezers full of tomato, soups, broccoli, peas, fruit and mashed potato.
A few Shirley tomatoes picked green and still ripening

Coming along
Broccoli Early Purple - 4 plants at home and one nearly ready at my friend's
Carrot Marion at home and Nantes Frubund Fastcrop in my friend's greenhouse, sown late for spring crop
Spinach Giant Winter in a pot in the growhouse and Amazon in a pot (supposed to be an autumn crop but got slug eaten so I'm growing it over winter in case it survives)
Mispoona in a pot in the growhouse
Mitsuba Mashimori in a pot in the growhouse
Spring Cabbage Spring Hero 4 plants in a pot
Kohlrabi mix 4 plants in a pot
Provencale salad mix seedlings in the grow light garden
Potato unknown red variety 3 potatoes in a pot in my friend's greenhouse just starting to sprout
2 Pepper Snackbite Orange plants cut down and overwintering on the landing windowsill (not tried this before) and 2 that are still trying to produce fruit
Fruit (strawberries, wild strawberries, apple, white currant, blackcurrant, gooseberry, blueberries, autumn raspberries, rhubarb)
Herbs (parsley, oregano, thyme)

Since New Year I have:
Sown lettuce Relic, spinach Reddy and mustard Green Frills in the propagator for baby leaf salads - the lettuce has germinated and is now in the grow light garden.
Bought some Lady Christl seed potatoes which are chitting in the spare room

[Bigmallly]

You need to start a blog Pene, it'd be brill.

[Lisasbolt]

I agree with BM, i loved reading your edible garden last year.

[Penellype]

Thanks both - I did look at blogs a while ago, but couldn't really see how to do one. I'm not good at new things, but I am used to forums, so I feel happier posting here for now. Must be something to do with getting old!

[Bigmallly]

I know that feeling Pene..................

[Penellype]

So, with nearly no light and a mudbath outside, what is there to do? I'm trying to finalize the planning. I thought I would show you my system, which is all on the computer. Other systems may suit other people better.

Varieties.

I have a folder for Garden on my computer, with a file for each variety. The folder looks like this:



As long as I name each file with the type and then the variety (eg carrot Eskimo, not Eskimo carrot) it acts as a nice index to what I have.

Each of the files looks something like this:



Which is just a plain text file in Openoffice (it would work just as well in Word).

I then have a spreadsheet with various pages, the 2 most important being what I intend to plant when and what I intend to plant where. These are a work in progress, and the tricky bit is getting them to match.





When something is sown or planted out I change the writing from black to green and I also add a date. These are all work in progress, so if I change my mind I can easily alter the plan, and I can also quite easily see what effect that will have later on.

It seems to work for me anyway. Now I'd better get back to the planning - I've got as far as April so far!

[Penellype]

In amongst the planning, harvested the last 2 of the January sown leeks (grew again after bolting) which were still not much more than "pencil thickness" hence not planning on sowing any more in January. Also in the process of cooking a large pan full of potatoes for mashing and freezing, as I noticed yesterday that some of the stored ones are starting to produce small chits. That, I suspect, is a result of the warm weather.

[Bigmallly]

Brilliant Pene, I'm impressed.............Just a thought, would MS Access have helped then all the info could be put on one card.

[Scoot]

Wow, you really do do a lot of work for your garden. It's brilliant.

My planning usually involves drawing the shape of my veg bed on a piece of paper and then dividing it up into what veg is going where and that's it.

[Penellype]

Brilliant Pene, I'm impressed.............Just a thought, would MS Access have helped then all the info could be put on one card.

Um, not sure what MS Access is...

[Penellype]

I do a bit of drawing and a lot of writing on bits of paper to get my thoughts straight, then add them to teh computer spreadsheet when I am sure what I have thought of fits the relevant space. Bits of paper get lost and buried, and the initial thinking/altering/trying out phase isn't that useful later, so I find the computer list easier to refer back to.

[Bigmallly]

In the Microsoft Package, you have Word, Excel, Picture Manager & Access. Access is similar to Excel.

What is Microsoft Access

[Penellype]

Ahh, I don't have Word or Excel - I got used to Openoffice and I am a creature of habit who hates learning new stuff.

[Gillykat]

Wow, you really do do a lot of work for your garden. It's brilliant.

My planning usually involves drawing the shape of my veg bed on a piece of paper and then dividing it up into what veg is going where and that's it.

That's what I do too I'm hopeless using computers and technical gadgetry Paper & pencil never lets me down

[Penellype]

A bit of tidying up before the cold weather really arrives. Took the nets off the brassicas so the frames don't break if it snows - I've still got the big veggiemesh cage to do. Also emptied most of the water out of the self watering trays and put tennis balls in to hopefully stop the reservoirs cracking if the water freezes. Covered the potatoes in my friend's greenhouse with a layer of bubble wrap and wrapped the surviving pepper plant in fleece. No idea if it will do any good, but worth a try.