It's been a long, wet winter here in Randomland. One stormfront after another has been blowing through but on the plus side, our little garden has been sheltered by trees, fences and hedges, and the allotment has surprisingly been spared any wind damage. There's hardly been any frost and most annuals and shrubs are showing fresh growth. It's just very soggy everywhere.
OH went to the allotment today to prune his grapevines and reported several of the Old Boys digging over their plots and the soil being not too sodden. I think we'll be resolutely no-dig, apart from that raspberry patch that is going to have to come up and be replanted in the spring. That can wait until April/May though when most of the moisture will have drained away.
The plot is still yielding produce: when I went in previous weeks, I mostly picked broccoli florets for soup, fresh parsley, some red cabbage (bit of a disaster really but okay for raw veg) and cavolo nero for a delicious new dish I've found on the internet involving Banh Trang rice paper wrappers, and for the filling you use celery sticks, angel hair rice noodles, fried chicken pieces, blanched cavolo nero and a home-made hoisin sauce made out of crunchy peanut butter heated up with some of my homemade plum jam. I've got a muscly, hair-on-your-chest winter recipe for kale -- a German kale stew with potatoes and smoked sausage -- but the use of kale as filling in a Vietnamese rice wrapper is MUCH more sophistiqué. I've inflicted it on OH several times now.
I'd also sown some Bavarian radish last autumn and some lettuce, all under fleece, but whatever came up got eaten by the slugs and the rest probably just sulked underground. So not a success.
Today however, I thought that I could give some of my seeds a headstart. I'd been a bit tardy in recent years and while it never really mattered given that the summers last forever round here, I would like to be able to put stuff in the ground as soon as the last frosts are gone.
So today I sowed the following:
12 aubergine seeds from Lidl -- to germinate in the warmth of our utility room
1 pot of basil "Sweet Genovese" -- third time lucky
40 "Kelvedon Early" peas -- these peas are ancient and may not actually sprout any more but if they don't, I have time to get another batch in
24 "Bunyards Exhibition" broadbeans
1 tray of homegrown lettuce seeds "King of May" -- will be interesting to see if they germinate but I've got bought ones left if they don't
1 tray of leeks "Autumn Mammoth"
1 tray of saved seeds of what I think is the previous allotment holder's Welsh Onions
1 tray of snapdragons (antirrhinum, Loewenmaeulchen), to germinate inside
1 tray of ageratum houstonianum (Leberbalsam), to germinate inside
1 tray of coriander (saved seeds from own-grown from the allotment)
1 medium-sized pot of "Amsterdam Maxi" baby carrots, for container growing
1 small tray of carrots "Jeannette" from Lidl, also to germinate inside
I also repotted an oregano plant that had overwintered well, and I separated several chive bulbs that were languishing in too-small pots. I'm a bit of a hoarder and one of the things I've always been reluctant to chuck out was these small panes of fortified clear glass from former shelving or fridges. This year, I'm determined to use them up as cold frames and have done so today. Let's see if they work their magic and speed up the germination process -- or speed up the mould growth instead.
OH soon came back from the plot and made me a cup of tea and then set to work putting this year's hopeful crop of peppers into a polythene bag with vermiculite. If the peppers germinate, I'd love to try and grow them against our southfacing front. Our front garden was a real success story last year, aesthetically and in terms of veggie produce (tomatoes, broad beans) and how cool would it be to have all your beans, tomatoes, peppers and aubergines growing around your front window?
So, spring has definitely sprung at Casa Random and as far as the growing year 2014 is concerned, we're out of the blocks. Woo hoo!
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