Monday 2 October 2017

On Line Shopping For The Veg Plot And Farmhouse Garden..

Its been horrible wet and raining and the veg plot is saturated.  You wouldn't put a milk bottle out in this weather.   

We have been doing some online shopping for the veg plot.  They arrived today via a courier man in a white van.  Do you buy things for your garden online?  He brought me:  Winter Vetch (Tares), Japanese onions (winter onions that you plant now) and Tulips (often felt like one) for the new borders at the back of the farmhouse.

What we ordered and a complimentary bag of sweets!



The Tares are a green manure and I am going to broadcast them on the area where next years potatoes are going to grow.  I have grown Mustard before.  Anybody else grow green manures?  Do No Dig gardeners use them?  You grow them to suppress weeds and then chop them them down with garden shears or my organic nettle fuelled( petrol)strimmer and dig them in.  I think Tares are a Legume?  So they extract Nitrogen from the air and release them through their root nodules into the soil.  They feed soil for free.  

I have grown Japs (Senshuy Onions) every autumn for over the last twenty years or so.  They grow through the snow, rain and even sunshine.  They aren't good storers?  Is there such a word?  But they fill up the plot and are ready before the summer onions.  

Never grown Elephant Garlic before.  Think its related to the Leek.  Yes I know they are all members of the Allium family.  But this is said to be a cross between the Leek and Garlic.  I believe you only need to buy a few cloves once.  

Do you grow them in ridges?  Our land is saturated at the moment.  You can never have enough paving slab paths can you?  The slugs like to live under them too?  They also love plastic?  Do you use slug pellets?  I think they are only man made chemical we have ever used on our veg plot.  Sometimes I have been very bored and gone outside with a torch looking for the naughty creatures.  You should hear what Anglo Saxon Expletives I call the Cabbage whites.  Must invest in a net  for my Brassica's next year Dave?  

What are you planting in your veg plot at the moment?  

8 comments:

  1. Just catching up. I've been away for a while! Blogging can do that !

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  2. Hi John. Hope you are well and enjoying life in Wales and good to see yo keep blogging. I know what you mean about blogging. Good to hear from you!

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  3. I'm in Louisiana, and we grew buckwheat as a green manure in long narrow beds. We dug it in by hand...seemed to help with weeds and fertility. LC

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  4. Hi LC. Buckwheat looks to be another great cover crop/green manure to use on the veg plot. I would rather grow green manures than cover vacant areas with plastic. Plastic makes a warm habitat for slugs and snails. Here in Ireland the summers seem to be getting wetter and I think using green manures will help prevent all the goodness in the soil getting washed away. Thanks for telling us about Buckwheat. I will add it to my green manure list.

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  5. No veggie growing here in my garden Dave! Farmers here used to grow mustard and then plough it in, also clover, for nitrogen for the soil, but not so much now. We used to do it but we were old fashioned!

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  6. Hi Rachel. Green Manures and Organic gardening has been going for a long time. Long before the petrol chemical industries started making granulate ("bag manure") fertilizer. Mustard is very good for clearing wire-worm from soil that was old pasture. I have grown it myself and strimmed it down and dug it in. I don't think you were old fashioned you looked after the land. Thanks!

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  7. Do you mean Cenhinen Pedr? I am not that clever I Googled the Welsh translation. We planted some Daffs this very morning.

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