The new year's planting season begins at last! Despite the last few relatively mild days, it's still too cold and wet to sow outside, so I've started my seed beds indoors.
In the heated propagator I sowed yesterday: a tray of lettuce 'lollo rosa', a tray of lemon basil, and a joint tray of tomatos ('Alicante'), peppers (pementos de Padron) and cucumber. These last three need the extra heat from the electric propagator, and have such a short growing season in the UK that they need to be sown the earliest. If the seeds don't germinate, though, or if they rot while young, I will not be too bothered as I only need a couple of plants of each and they always stock them in the garden centre (except for the peppers from Padron, which come from near my parent's in Spain and you can't find in the UK!).
You can see in the photo I also have some potatoes chitting by the windowsill: they are some red potatoes from last year's crop, that I noticed began sprouting in the shed. I wasn't going to bother with potatoes this year (they're too much of a faff to clean in the kitchen), but these red ones are unusual and I like them. The row of loo roll tubes in mugs are awaiting to be filled with pea seeds - that's one for the coming weekend.
And then there's the growing plans for the rest of the year. I can't draw proper plans (funny, considering I work for architects...), but the messy diagram below works for me. It definitely gets easier and less esoteric each year! I have managed to maintain some sort of crop rotation from last year, so I'm not growing the same kind of crop in the same place as last year. And, amazingly, I managed to find space for everything I want to grow (!!!), and to take into account what comes first and what will go in the space left by a previous crop.
In blue I've marked all the digging I plan to do, it's not a lot and it will all be done in by the end of March or so, so I feel quite chuffed with that! I was there last Saturday, making the supports for the raspberries and digging over that bed (I grew cabbages and beans last year), and I was very pleased to note that the soil was a nice consistency, clay but not sticky, and full of earth worms - what a nice surprise!
The front bed (bottom of the picture) is in the wors state, as I barely had time to do anything with it last year. But I've got a huge bin full of home-made compost from my house bunny that I plan to dig in this coming weekend, and I'm sure that's going to do the trick!
And finally, on 10 March all the allotment holders are planning Operation Compost: the council is giving away a huge heap of compost to anyone who turns up, and I'm hoping to get a few bags to fill in my mini-raised beds.
No tengo mucho tiempo para traducir todo lo de aqui arriba, asi que aqui esta la version reducida:
Ayer empece con las siembras del 2013, de momento solo a cubierto porque aun hace demasiado frio. En el semillero electrico (foto 1) tengo: tomates, pimientos de padron, pepino, lechuga y albahaca. En el borde de la ventana tengo unas patatas rojas del ano pasado, que empezaron a germinar en la caseta. Patatas normales no voy a plantar este ano porque ocupan desmasiado espacio y son un rollo de limpiar, pero estas rojas si porque son raras y me hacen gracia (y sabe bien). Y en las tazas/tubos de rollo de papel voy a sembrar unos guisantes este fin d e semana proximo.
He hecho un plano de lo que pienso sembrar este ano, y aunque dibujo fatal y parece caotico, la verdad es que cada ano resulta mas facil. He conseguido encontrarle sitio a todo lo que quiero cultivar este ano, asi que me siento orgullosa! Dese arriba de la foto hacia abajo, en cada una de las franjas, voy a poner:
- guisantes (junto a la valla del vecino), al lado de la menta
- judias, calabacines y pepinos; y en otono transplantare alguna berza, chirivia o nabos, y grelos
- delante del soporte para las frambuesas: tomatillos, las patatas rojas, y en otono transplantare los puerros
- cebollas y cebolletas
- coliflor, repollos y espinacas
En las jardineras bajas voy a poner: lechugas, ajos (ya estan plantados en una), rucula, una la voy a reservar para semilllero. Y donde me queden huecos ire poniendo flores para atraer a las abejas y demas animales polinizadores (y porque queda bonito!)
No comments:
Post a Comment